4 mass killings in 4 days show how random murder can be

Yamiche Alcindor and Meghan Hoyer | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption How to make sense of 4 families slain in 4 days? Four mass killings involving four different families, in four states over four bloody days. 23 people dead. Criminologists say this tragic cluster was nothing more than random chance, not a sign of growing violence in America. (Oct. 31)

Killings are the worst consecutive spate in at least seven years

Mass killings in four states in four days

This year so far%2C 121 people have died in 26 mass killings

Nineteen people died in four mass killings over four days, the latest in a spate of tragedies showcasing shockingly familiar patterns of violence.

It's the first time in at least seven years that four mass murders happened within four days, according to a USA TODAY database that began collecting information in 2006.

Killers in three incidents went after those closest to them, the most common form of violence, while one man killed his neighbors. The nature and number of these deaths worry some but experts say the recent killings, while highly unusual, illustrate the random nature of mass murders.

"It makes me very angry and very sad," said Hollie Ayers, whose ex-husband shot her four times and killed their two-year old son Michael, before committing suicide in March. "In a developed country, this is probably one of the scariest things that you can hear and read about."

Wednesday, Ayers went to Washington, D.C. with a group organized by Mayors Against Illegal Guns. She and others including Senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator Chris Murphy urged Congress to pass stronger gun laws and require background checks on private and online sales of firearms. She believes the changes will prevent killings like the succession of violence that recently gripped four states.

Mingdong Chen, 25, a Chinese immigrant, is charged with stabbing his cousin's wife and her four children to death on Saturday in New York. That same day in Arizona, Michael Dante Guzzo used his pump-action shotgun on his next-door neighbors--a family of four, police said. Charles Everett Brownlow Jr. was arrested in Texas after allegedly killing his mother, aunt and three others on Monday. The next day, Bryan Sweatt allegedly shot his ex-girlfriend and four others in South Carolina.

"Four mass killings within four days is unusual," said Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who wrote a book on mass murders between 1900 and 1999. "It certainly does exceed the norm of what we see within a given month or week. But, it's too early to say whether the total number of cases is higher than what we would see on average."

About 30 mass killings happen each year, Duwe said.

This year, 121 people have died in 26 mass killings, according to USA TODAY's database. Last year, 133 people died in 22 mass killings.

The incidents happen about every 13 days, statistics show. This year, on April 28, July 26 and April 18th two mass killings happened on the same day. In February 2008, four mass killings happened in five days.

These numbers are part of the reason Jack Levin, a sociology and criminology professor at Boston's Northeastern University, isn't surprised that four mass killings happened in such a short time.

"Murders don't distribute themselves evenly over a 12-month period," Levin said. "Just because we see four occurring in proximity to each other doesn't mean we are suffering through an epidemic of mass murders but that's what people will think."

That type of thinking disturbs Kim Gandy, president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

"The idea that it is not statistically significant to have 19 people die in a couple of days really tells you the enormity of this problem," she said.

Though statistics might not show such killings as abnormal, Gandy explained that murders have long lasting effects that can ruin people's lives and reverberate through family generations.

The numbers support her stance.

Some 40 percent of mass killings involved one family member killing another, Levin said. Often, a father, husband or boyfriend has some sort of struggle either with losing a job, custody of a child or the love of a significant other and decides to murder. In other cases, a child might kill their parents and siblings.

"In many cases, the motive in a family annihilation is revenge," Levin said. "The killer believes his victims are responsible for his miseries in life and decides to get even through the barrel of a gun or through a stabbing."

He added that people rarely think of their family members as potential assailants because they know and trust the person.

For Christy Salters Martin, who was stabbed and shot by her estranged husband in 2010, the issue was domestic violence. A former professional boxer, Martin said she kept quiet about her abusive husband to protect her career.

Like Ayers, she was on Capitol Hill Wednesday asking lawmakers to make getting a gun tougher.



"For 20 years my husband had been telling me if I ever left him, he would kill me," she said. "People have to pay close attention to family members."

Contributing: Meghan Hoyer, Paul Overberg, Jodi Upton and the Associated Press.