L. McLafferty1, J. Abolarin1, H. Carmichael1, C. G. Velopulos1 1University Of Colorado Denver,Department Of Surgery,Aurora, CO, USA
Introduction:
Recently, multiple casualty events, particularly mass shootings, have become a focus of media attention. Because these events are heavily publicized, this can lead to the impression that school shootings and other rampages resulting in the deaths of strangers are typical. We hypothesized that many multiple homicides actually involve victims known to the perpetrator, such as family members or intimate partners.
Methods:
We analyzed homicides from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) from 2003 to 2015. We examined multiple homicide events (involving two or more victims), including those that were followed by suicide of the perpetrator or death by legal intervention (law enforcement). When the relationship between the perpetrator and victims was unknown, narratives were examined for evidence to classify incidents into categories including drug related, robbery or burglary related, argument or retaliation related, or mental health related incidents.
Results:
We identified 2425 incidents involving a total of 5,424 homicide victims, indicating that 9.3% of all homicide victims in NVDRS were killed in events that involved at least two victims. Of these events, 13.8% (n=341) were homicides followed by suicide of the perpetrator. Many of these incidents involved intimate partners or family members of the victims (n=741, 30.6%). For those where the victims and the suspect were not family members (n=1684), homicides appeared to have been related to a combination of drug-related (n=247, 14.7%), robbery or burglary-related (n=289, 17.2%), argument or retaliation related (n=320, 19.0%). Few of these events were related specifically to a mental health crisis (n=39, 2.3%) resulting in the deaths of multiple strangers. Only 31 incidents (1.3%) involved 5 or more victims. Of these, many still involved family members or intimate partners (n=14, 45%). Of the mass casualty events involving strangers (n=, a larger portion were related to mental health (n=6, 35%).
Conclusion:
In our examination of multiple casualty events, we found that many of these still involve a single perpetrator killing an intimate partner and/or other family members, event for events with more than 4 victims. While the scenario of a single perpetrator with mental health issues going on a “shooting rampage” resulting in the deaths of multiple strangers is certainly more common in mass casualty incidents, it is rare overall. Because this type of mass shooting event has recently been a focus of media attention, it is important to remember that these widely publicized incidents may not be typical of homicides involving multiple victims in the United States.
