Based on a June 15, 2002 article in the Toronto Star
Murder
suicide leaves five dead
Grimsby
family shot by ex-boyfriend
By Peter Edwards staff Reporter
Full
Story
The article reports that "Five people are dead in a murder-suicide in Grimsby last
night in which a man shot his ex-girlfriend, her parents and her four-year-old daughter
before turning the gun on himself. "
Incongruously, although it appears to be clear that the case is a murder-suicide,
"Constable George Bench of Niagara Regional Police" stated that "At the
present time we're not actively pursuing any suspects." It would be hard to
imagine how anyone would pursue a dead murder suspect.
The man who perpetrated the murder-suicide has not yet been identified, but the article
states that he drove a car with a Wisconsin licence plate. In a
subsequent
article, the man's name is identified as Peter Kiss, a tow-truck operator from
Milwauky.
It is a tragedy that these things happen, but there is nothing in the article that
explains why they do happen. What is in the article is stereo-typing.
(A friend of the family) "The son of a bitch is dead."
"Neighbours said the couple had lived together in Wisconsin before Christmas, but
Shannon and her daughter moved back to Grimsby just after Mother's Day." It
doesn't state who the father of the little girl was.* I imagine that the father was
the man who killed the four people and himself. Why did he? However, most
certainly the little girl wasn't just "her daughter."
* A
subsequent
article mentions the man who is the father of Shannon Cruse's daughter: "The man,
who dated Shannon when they were both in high school, had maintained a close relationship
with his daughter through the years. He broke down in tears and was comforted by police
while being led away from the area, neighbours said." Note that the man is not
even identified as the father of the little girl.
The article reports a neighbour opinion: "'We've known these people for all these
years, and some maniac can wipe the family out in minutes,' he said later, his eyes
blinking in disbelief." I suppose that any man killing anyone else, for
whatever reason, is simply a maniac. However, let's hope that, with more and more
fathers being robbed of their children, the extremely rare occasions when some of them
turn into maniacs who kill their ex-wives or ex-girlfriends and the children they fathered
will not become more common.
According to Jeff White, "Over a 23-year period, note Martin Daly and Margo Wilson
of McMaster University, men committed 61 such crimes in Canada. Women committed
none." (Report Newsmagazine, Apr. 29, 2002, "Andrea Yates notwithstanding, serious
domestic violent crime remains a mostly male activity," by Jeff White)
However, as illustrated with hard and cold facts in
my response to Jeff White's article, his claim,
that "serious domestic violent crime remains a mostly male activity," is a
distortion of the facts. Women, not men,
kill more
children, by far. Therefore, counting children as well, women, not men, are
most often the perpetrators of domestic violence crimes. |
