America’s Mass Shooting Problem Is a Domestic Violence Problem
▻https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/11/08/americas-mass-shooting-problem-is-a-domestic-violence-problem
Devin P. Kelley, the 26-year-old man who killed 26 people in a Texas church on Sunday, had a long and documented history of intimate violence. In 2012, Kelley was charged with assault and eventually received a “bad conduct” discharge from the Air Force after he kicked, beat, and choked his first wife. The charges against him included allegations he had pointed a loaded gun at his wife multiple times. Kelley also fractured his toddler stepson’s skull by hitting him with what was described in Air Force records as “a force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.”
Over the course of the next two years, Kelley was investigated for violence against other women, including, according to a New York Times report, charges that he sexually assaulted and raped someone. He also brutally attacked his dog, hitting the animal repeatedly in the head.
Kelley is emblematic of a strikingly consistent pattern: Most mass killers have histories of domestic violence that went unaddressed. He joins a long list, including Omar Mateen, the Orlando Pulse nightclub killer; Tamerlan Tsarnaev, accused in the bombing of the Boston Marathon; Adam Lanza, who killed his mother before walking into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killing 26 people; Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who plowed a van through a crowd in Nice, France; and Khalid Masood, who did the same in Westminster, London.