In their scramble to keep up with the mayhem in Kansas City this past week, the media have missed a disturbing trend: more than half of those killed have been women.
On average nationally, women comprise less than one-fourth of homicide victims. One hopes this past week was an anomaly, but four women in Kansas City were murdered and at least three were critically injured. Details on some of these deaths remain sketchy.
On July 28, 17-year-old Xzavier C. McDowell stabbed his 27-year-old paramour Deandrea Vine to death after she told him she was pregnant, and he was the father. Vine already had four children. If she were indeed pregnant, the unborn baby, unlike the unborn babies routinely killed in abortion clinics, would have been a murder victim as well.
On August 1, 43-year-old Bernice Brown was killed trying to protect her son from Tyjaun Caldwell, 20. Caldwell reportedly shot and killed Brown as she was shielding her son from Caldwell with whom he had gotten into a fight.
Late in the evening of August 4, an unnamed gunman fired into a crowd in. Six people were shot, three men, three women, all in serious condition. Police spokespeople and the media were coy about where the crowd came from.
The fact the Heart of America Hot Dog Festival, sponsored by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, ended less than an hour earlier should have been something of a give-away. After complaining about his vantage point at the festival, one local music blogger ended his review, “At least I didn’t get shot.”
Hours later, a shooting occurred just east of Center High School near Troost. The female victim called 911 saying she had been shot. Emergency personnel found her dead at the scene. As of this writing, no name has been given for the victim. Less than an hour after that, police found a woman dead in the street near 107th and Greenwood in the Ruskin Hills neighborhood. She too has not yet been named.
Four women and one unborn baby murdered. Three women seriously injured, all in one week on the east side of Kansas City. The anonymity of these deaths should trouble more than just the families of the women who were killed.
