While the nation was trying to digest the crime of two media
members killed on camera in Virginia by a legal gun owner, a spate of women
killed by enraged armed husbands in one week received less notice.
Hours after receiving a year of unsupervised probation for violating an order of protection against domestic violence filed by his wife, James Terry Colley, Jr. shot and killed his wife Amanda Cloaninger and her friend Lindy Dobbins in St. Augustine, Florida on August 27 say police. Until Colley was apprehended, three nearby schools were locked down including one where the couple's child attends.
Two days later, Blessing Okereke was fatally shot in the Bank of America tower in Oak Cliff in Dallas by her husband say police. Husband David Thompson told police he believed his wife was reaching for his pistol, so he shot her in self-defense. Right.
The following day, August 30, Nuria N. Kudlach was fatally shot at her home in State College, PA and her husband was charged with first- and third-degree murder the following day. The next day, August 31, Sonja Wells Raine was fatally shot on her job in Pascagoula, MS by her enraged husband according to police. Raine's "sister got killed the same way by her boyfriend or husband, so that is shocking," said co-worker Kim Pinkney. The next day, September 1, 76-year-old Norman McKinney of Erwin, Tennessee, allegedly killed his wife of 30 years. McKinney was elderly, "had two or three strokes" and other "medical issues" and couldn't even dial a phone explained the sheriff. "Why did he have a gun?
Amazingly, even more women were shot by enraged husbands in one week. Also shot the last week in August were Francisca Jew at a donut shop in Devine, Texas and an unidentified Arlington, Washington woman. The Devine and Arlington women are expected to survive.
Half the murders of women in the US each year are by intimate partners and homicide increases 500 percent when a firearm is present. Yet the overwhelmingly male NRA is okay with the gendercide statistics and actually works for the "gun rights" of suspected domestic abusers, also overwhelmingly men. In Michigan the NRA sought to push through a law allowing people under court issued restraining orders to keep their guns. Like David Thompson, the suspect in the Bank of America tower murder in Dallas, they might have to "defend " themselves.
When women are gunned down by enraged partners, often in public places where others are injured too, the NRA likes to say if women are really scared they should arm themselves too. The rhetoric is offensive. Should Nadia Ezaldein, fatally shot by an enraged boyfriend in front of horrified shoppers as she worked behind the cosmetics counter at Chicago's Magnificent Mile Nordstrom's last Black Friday, have kept a gun under the counter just in case?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
