The mass shooting in Canada was an ongoing domestic violence attack.
At least 22 were brutally murdered by the shooter (who I am not naming) at 16 different crime scenes.
Significantly, yet not surprisingly, the shooter assaulted his partner first. He then targeted the neighbours and others locally.
She managed to escape and hid from the suspect in the woods overnight.
At about 6:30 a.m., she came out of hiding in the woods and called 911. She told police detailed information about the suspect including that he was driving a mock police car and was in police uniform. She is currently recovering from the attack.
Amongst those he killed was a female police officer and he also shot and injured another male police officer.
The shooter was shot dead 13 hours after the attack started.
My Two Cents:
He was obsessed with the police. He was driving a mock police car and wearing police uniform.
This did not just happen out of the blue and it has the hall marks of being planned.
He will no doubt have a history of coercively controlling behaviour across multiple relationships. In fact, various local sources have revealed he had “issues with girlfriends” and was jealous and controlling.
In time we will find out that he had issues with authority and issues in relationships with people in general.
He did have previous history for assaulting a man. He pled guilty to the assault charge and agreed to attend “anger management” counselling.
I would not be surprised if this assault was linked to domestic abuse. In fact, it’s most likely.
I have learned across my career analysing and profiling violent men, that men like this do not wake up one day and kill. It is a pattern of behaviour.
Whether he thought it was right to attack his girlfriend and kill so many people, he thought it was his right to exact revenge on his girlfriend for some perceived wrong doing and kill 22 people.
These shootings are always targeted and it was not ‘triggered by domestic abuse.’ It WAS ongoing domestic violence. He took a decision to attack his girlfriend and shoot and kill 22 people all on his own.
We have to talk about coercive control, stalking, male entitlement and male privilege, a deadly combination in violent men.
Men like this are ticking time bombs. It’s not if it will happen – it’s when.
But there’s an awful lot of silence about male violence.
It’s time we changed that. We must make the links across patterned abuse and violence inside and outside the home.
It’s time that women mattered and we believed them when they report controlling and abusive men.
And it’s time we held men responsible for male violence.
For more information about coercive control click the link