Written by Danielle Chiriguayo, produced by Bennett Purser and Brian Hardzinski

A gunman in San Jose killed nine people and then himself at a light rail yard on Wednesday. The incident adds another mass shooting to the list of more than 200 events in 2021 alone.

The gunman’s neighbors told local media outlets they were scared of him and that he had a temper, while court records indicate a history of alleged domestic abuse and violent mood swings.

KCRW talks about the details of the shooting and about the state of gun control in California with Mercury News reporter Maggie Angst and Giffords Law Center Implementation Director Julia Weber. KCRW is not using the name of the shooter.

Angst says the shooter was a 57-year-old man who worked for the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) for 20 years. She adds that new surveillance footage from his neighbor’s home indicates he set fire to his home shortly after getting into a vehicle with a large duffel bag. It’s currently unclear how many rounds were fired, but Angst says he had three semi-automatic handguns and 11 magazines with 12 rounds in them.

The shooter’s victims were all VTA employees who worked in the maintenance yard. “Some had been working for decades, some just several years. It’s unclear how well all of them knew each other. But we know at least one of the victims was the manager of another one of them. So it’s presumed that they were all pretty close,“ Angst says.

She adds that the shooter had a history of domestic violence and sexual assault allegations. According to 2009 court records, an ex-girlfriend accused him of sexual assault, rape, abusive behavior.

According to Weber, there are links between domestic violence and mass shootings. She notes that nearly one-third of mass shooters have a history of domestic violence, while in the majority of mass shootings where members of the public are injured or killed, an intimate partner is also killed.

“Every year more than 600 women are shot to death by intimate partners. One roughly every 14 hours. There are over a million women alive today who have been shot or shot at by a male intimate partner. There’s about 4.5 million women who reported that a partner has threatened them with a gun,” Weber tells KCRW. “Those who are experiencing domestic violence are at high risk of being threatened or harmed or killed by someone who has a firearm who is their intimate partner, or former intimate partner.  … We have to take those threats of violence very seriously and recognize that that person may be at risk not only to that individual but to the public generally.”

In California, Weber says perpetrators of domestic violence are prohibited from owning, possessing, or purchasing a firearm when they have a domestic violence restraining order against them. Those bans are in place for as long as the order is in place. Those who are convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor or felony are also barred from possessing, owning, or purchasing a firearm.

“We do have strong laws. And they need to be implemented and enforced,” Weber says. “We need to take action at the local level to ensure that those firearms, if they own them currently, are separated from that individual.”

To view the original article, click here.

By Elizabeth Nouryeh-Clay

By Sarah Buduson

TOLEDO, Ohio — Ohio is just one of two states that does not recognize strangulation as a felony, a violent act that’s part of domestic violence cases and is also a precursor to murder.

“It tells me that it hasn’t been a priority,” Ohio Sen. Nickie Antonio said.

Antonio is a co-sponsor of S.B. 90, the fourth proposal to create a felony offense for strangulation in Ohio. The bill, introduced in February, would make strangulation a third-degree felony.

Read the full text of S.B. 90 here.

Similar bills were introduced in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Each time, Ohio’s legislative session expired before the bills were voted on by both chambers.

“Is it because a majority of the offenses that are put in the domestic violence category, a majority of the victims are women?” Antonio said. “Is it because we just haven’t been able to connect the dots (regarding the dangers)?”

Antonio, a Democrat, and Sen. Stephanie Kunze, a Republican, have received some interesting feedback.

“When we talk about this with our colleagues, they bring up people horsing around, horseplay, and if we make this a felony crime, ‘Would be suddenly charging felonies to two guys just fooling around?'” Antonio said.

“I don’t that’s what we’re talking about here,” she added

‘Extremely dangerous’

Dr. Bill Smock, the nation’s only police surgeon, said, “It is critical to the residents of Ohio that your legislators understand the risks associated with strangulation.”

READ MORE: Dr. Smock’s Top 25 Serious Medical Consequences Resulting from Strangulation and the Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint

Smock’s expert testimony recently helped convict Derek Chauvin of George Floyd’s murder.

Smock is also the medical director for the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, a program of Alliance for HOPE International, which aims to educate legal and medical professionals about the dangers of strangulation and improve offender accountability.

“It is so easy for one individual to put their hands or arms around another individual and render them unconscious, dead, or somewhere in-between,” he said.

Smock said the neck is “extremely delicate.” He said it takes only 11 pounds of pressure to block blood flow to the brain. He said the average woman’s handshake is 60 to 80 pounds of pressure.

Smock said being strangled for only moments can permanently damage blood vessels, cartilage, vocal cords, and the spinal cord. It takes just seconds longer for strangulation to cause blood clots, brain injuries, and strokes.

In less than a minute, an individual can be killed.

“We have to put into statute that applying pressure to the neck is a dangerous and felonious act that results in injuries to the individual or death,” he said.

‘The last warning shot’

“Strangulation is really the last warning shot before a homicide,” Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Sherrie Miday said. “And we’re trying to prevent those homicides.”

Since last November, she has overseen the High-Risk Domestic Violence Court, which aims to reduce domestic violence homicides.

So far, a court spokesperson said 70% of the 50 defendants on the docket are accused or convicted stranglers. The use of firearms during a domestic violence offense is the only other qualification.

“One of the catalysts to this docket is we were seeing so many allegations of strangulation,” she said.

The Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education analyzed three years of data from Cleveland domestic violence victims who each filled out a risk assessment to determine how likely they are to be murdered by their intimate partners.

Read the full report here.

Researchers found 90% of the victims determined to be at high-risk for homicide also reported being strangled.

The assessments stem, in part, from a groundbreaking 2008 study, which found domestic violence victims who are strangled are 750% more likely to be murdered.

For example, years before Aisha Fraser was killed by her ex-husband, former Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Lance Mason, court records show he strangled her during an incident where he also fractured her left orbital bone.

RELATED: ‘Aisha’s Law’ returns to Ohio legislature

‘A clear connection’

Stranglers don’t only murder their intimate partners.

They’re tied to both the murders of police officers and mass shootings.

Among them:

View this interactive map in full-screen here.

• June 12, 2016: Omar Mateen, Pulse Nightclub shooting, Orlando, Florida

• November 5, 2017: Devin Patrick Kelley, First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs, Texas

• August 4, 2019: Connor Betts, (near) Ned Peppers Bar, Dayton, Ohio

“These are generally rage-filled men that have some sort of trauma in their background, usually some sort of childhood trauma,” Smock said. “They’re able to take a partner’s life, a police officer’s life, or someone in a mass gathering’s life.”

‘A disability and a life sentence’

Paula Walters remains perplexed that Ohio does not recognize strangulation as a felony.

“You don’t accidentally put your hands around someone’s throat,” she said.

On June 25, 2006, after a night out at The Dock in East Toledo, Paula and her former boyfriend, Bryan Jameson, went back to his house.

They had been drinking. She said he accused of her cheating on him with co-workers they met at the bar. She said he threatened her at gunpoint, hit her, and kicked her.

Then, he strangled her.

Paula Walters’s injuries

“I vividly remember him putting his hands around my throat as he looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know if I should kiss you or kill you,'” she said.

She woke up in the emergency room. She was alive, but her problems had just begun.

Being strangled left Paula with a permanent brain injury.

“Sometimes, when I’m trying to walk, it feels like the room is moving,” she said. “I often feel, I say, drunk on a boat. That’s how I explain it to my doctors.”

Loud noises are so distracting she no longer eats in restaurants. She is often too tired to follow through on plans with friends.

“Every aspect of my work has to be carefully thought out and planned,” she said. “Because day to day, what I can and can’t handle changes.”

Jameson was charged with felonious assault. He pleaded to aggravated attempted menacing. He was sentenced to probation and a fine.

“And I got a disability and a life sentence,” she said.

‘We’re missing it’

Walters has since started a non-profit to teach people about the risks of strangulation and domestic violence called Standing Courageous, after spending years having her brain injury misdiagnosed.

“If the right people had known the right information…back in 2006, when my case happened, the trajectory of my life would have been different,” she said.

Walters also testified before the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019 in support of the previous bill to make strangulation a felony in Ohio. It never received a vote.

“This is happening to so many people,” she said. “And we’re missing it.”

There are currently no hearings scheduled in Ohio’s Senate Judiciary Committee for SB 90.

Sen. Nathan Manning, the committee’s chairman, did not return our calls.

His spokesperson said Manning will likely schedule hearings after budget hearings are complete.

To view the original story, click here.

By Ali Howard and Elizabeth McMeekin

New research has found that 78% of women prisoners in Scotland have a history of significant head injury – most of which occurred in the context of domestic abuse that often lasted over periods of several years.

The University of Glasgow-led study – funded by the Scottish Government and published today in the Lancet Psychiatry – also found 66% of women prisoners had suffered repeat head injuries for many years. The majority of the study participants were from the most deprived population quintile.

Domestic violence was the most common cause of repeat head injury in the women surveyed, reported by 89% of the participants who also reported repeat head injuries. Only five women had experienced a single incident moderate-severe head injury, without multiple, mild head injuries in addition. Of those with a history of significant head injury, a first head injury before the age of 15 was reported by 69% of women.

For the study, researchers interviewed around a quarter of women in Scottish prisons, 109 women in total, between 2018 and 2019. The women were assessed for a history of head injury, including its causes, a history of abuse, as well as for disability and mental and physical health conditions. The study included participants from four Scottish prisons: HMP Cornton Vale, Greenock, Lothian and Polmont.

Of the 78% of women prisoners who had a history of significant head injury, 40% of those who participated in the study also had an associated disability. Previous research has reported that many women in prison have a history of head injury, but none looked at disability.

Researchers also found that violent criminal behaviour was three times more likely in those with a history of significant head injury, and that women with a significant head injury had spent three times longer in prison.

Almost all participants in the study, 95%, reported a history of abuse, with more than half reporting sexual abuse in childhood and 46% reporting sexual abuse in adulthood. Physical abuse in childhood was reported by 39%, while 81% of participants reported physical abuse in adulthood.

A history of alcohol or drug misuse was common, with substantially higher rates in the group who reported significant head injuries. Almost all, 92%, complained of mental health difficulties, with anxiety and depression the most commonly reported. Although the average years of education for participants was 12, schooling was often disrupted by exclusion or truanting and many required special schooling or support.

Professor Tom McMillan, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Glasgow and lead author of the study, said: “It is already recognised that women in prison are vulnerable because of histories of abuse and substance misuse. However, this research shows that a history of significant head injury is also a vulnerability and needs to be included when considering mental health needs and in developing criminal justice policy given the relationships with associated disabilities, abuse and violent crime’’.

“Our findings suggest that interventions to reduce mental health morbidity, and assessment and management of risk of violent offending should include history of significant head injury. There is a need to recognise these vulnerabilities at an early stage, including at the first contact with the criminal justice system, to assess these women and provide long term support.”

Common persisting effects of significant head injury include impairments in information processing and emotional changes associated with impulsivity, irritability and egocentricity. These effects can impair judgement and self-control, and as a result increase risk of offending. Significant head injury can also impair the maturation of the developing brain if occurring before adulthood.

The characteristics of significant head injury in women in prison differ from women with significant head injury in the general population. Domestic violence was the most common cause of these injuries in women in prison, whereas falls are most common in the general population. In addition head injury occurred repeatedly in around two-thirds of women in prison with significant head injury, whereas single incident head injury from an accident is more common in the general population.

At the time the study took place the total number of women in Scottish prisons was around 400, and there were 355 women in the prisons the researchers recruited participants from. All the women prisoners who took part were aged over 16 years.

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Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk or elizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831

To view the original article, click here.