Maher Kassem shot his wife and three adult daughters in the basement of their south suburban Tinley Park home Sunday after an argument broke out over money, police say.
All of the younger women were shot in the head, and the family matriarch, 53-year-old Majeda Kassem, was struck by bullets about a half-dozen times.
“They’re gone,” the 63-year-old gunman allegedly told arresting officers, showing no remorse for the violence that partly unfolded in front of his 19-year-old son. “Everything is OK.”
The same day, several miles away in Joliet and unincorporated Joliet Township, authorities say Romeo Nance shot nine people, killing eight of them, most of whom were related to him in some way. Nance, 23, killed himself during a stand off with authorities in Texas the next day.
“We just don’t have any clue as to why he did what he did,” Joliet Police Chief Bill Evans said.
Questions remain in both mass shootings, but the information so far is a chilling reminder that domestic violence is at the core of so much of this nation’s gun violence — including, according to one study, in most mass shootings.
Many victims know their shooters, and are connected by blood, marriage or a romantic relationship.
And in these situations, it is women who are most likely to lose their lives.
Most victims in the two recent suburban shootings were girls and women. When women are shot and killed, it’s most likely to be by an intimate partner or in the context of domestic violence — and states with weak gun laws have higher rates of gun homicides involving women, according to the Center for American Progress.
Maher Kassem, who has a valid firearms owner identification card, killed all the women in his immediate family. Of the eight people murdered during Nance’s deadly spree, three were women and two were teenage girls, ages 14 and 16, police said.
Red flag laws and laws that keep those with a history of domestic violence from obtaining firearms can help prevent mass shootings committed by disturbed individuals or those prone to violence. But Maher Kassem had no prior criminal background, and there have been very few details, if any, to show whether he or Nance were previously involved in domestic incidents with their female victims.
But if there was a history of abuse, it should come as no surprise that an available firearm could easily lead to deadly consequences: Access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a woman will die at the hands of a domestic abuser, data from Everytown for Gun Safety shows.
Mass shootings tied to domestic violence
Many Americans hear the term “mass shooting,” and immediately think of a deranged stranger firing into a school, movie theater, grocery store, house of worship or other public space.
Those scenarios rightfully draw national interest and calls for tougher gun legislation. But the majority of mass shootings — defined by the FBI as shootings in which four or more people are wounded or killed — are tied to domestic violence, research has found.
More than two-thirds of fatal mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 were domestic violence incidents, or were perpetrated by shooters with a history of domestic violence, according to a 2021 research paper in the journal Injury Epidemiology.
These shootings are also more deadly: The victims in domestic violence-related mass shootings were more likely to die compared to the victims in mass shootings that were unrelated to domestic violence. When power, control, jealously, financial concerns or other emotions are factored in, a situation can easily become more volatile — and it may be easier for a person to kill his or her targets. Someone who shoots into a crowd may have less clear intent, and the victims are killed or injured at random, the paper concluded.
It’s difficult to say whether the mass murders in Tinley Park and Joliet could have been stopped.
But it’s not hard to say that the victims likely never expected to die in a hail of bullets from a gun clutched by a husband, father or other relative — a grim reminder that domestic violence isn’t just about physical abuse.
For too many women and girls, it’s a matter of life or death.
Help is always available to people who feel threatened inside their home or other supposed safe space. The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 and its website at www.thehotline.org, operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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