While mass shootings occur fairly often in the U.S., the killing of eight members of a Pike County, Ohio, family April 22, 2016 was not a typical case, Deborah Azrael, director of research at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, said in an April 27, 2016 USA Today article.
“This is an execution,” Azrael said. “This reads like a Mexican drug cartel kind of story. This was a targeted, instrumental shooting.”
Since the beginning of 2013, mass murders—in which four or more people are gunned down at approximately the same time and location—have claimed 409 victims and injured 129 in 30 states and Washington, D.C, according to the article. However, most are domestic incidents and end in either the death or capture of the gunman. In the Ohio case, no arrests had been made and the motive was reportedly unclear as of May 2, 2016.
“This doesn’t happen anywhere else,” Azrael said. “It’s not that other places are immune, but there’s no place in the world in which you can count bodies four at a time on a regular basis.”
Read the USA Today article: In nation of routine gun violence, Ohio killings an anomaly
Learn more:
Harvard Injury Control Research Center: Homicide