James Fields may have only killed one person in Charlottesville on Saturday, but his actions suggest he was trying to kill far more. And he has something important in common with many mass killers. Not just that he’s a man—something more specific. Fields has a history of domestic violence allegations, in his case, from his own mother:
The records the Florence Police Department in Kentucky show the man’s mother had called police in 2011. Records show Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, told police he stood behind her wielding a 12-inch knife. Bloom is disabled and uses a wheelchair.
In another incident in 2010, Bloom said that Fields smacked her in the head and locked her in the bathroom after she told him to stop playing video games. Bloom told officers Fields was on medication to control his temper.
Fields joins Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen and Nice Bastille Day truck attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel and congressional baseball shooter James Hodgkinson and Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear as a mass killer or attempted mass killer with a history of domestic violence. In fact:
When Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, analyzed F.B.I. data on mass shootings from 2009 to 2015, it found that 57 percent of the cases included a spouse, former spouse or other family member among the victims — and that 16 percent of the attackers had previously been charged with domestic violence.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to live in a world where this pattern was taken seriously?
(Via)