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California school shooting part of a disturbing trend: women murdered at work

Women are disproportionately likely to be killed at work, often by an intimate partner.

Betty Rodriguez and her granddaughter Giselle during a prayer service to honor the shooting victims at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, CA. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Betty Rodriguez and her granddaughter Giselle during a prayer service to honor the shooting victims at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, CA. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

As she was teaching her special education class of first through fourth graders on Monday morning in San Bernardino, California, Karen Elaine Smith was confronted by someone she knew: her estranged husband, Cedric Anderson. According to news reports, at about 10:30 a.m. Anderson entered her classroom and silently raised a large caliber revolver, fatally shooting Smith and hitting two nearby students. One of those students, 8-year-old Jonathan Martinez, was also killed. Anderson then turned the gun on himself.

The classroom murder horrified a community that only two years ago witnessed a shooting that killed 14 people. This latest murder is the 220th school shooting since 2013. But the incident on Monday is also part of a different trend: the disproportionate share of women who are murdered at work every year.

Homicide is consistently one of the leading causes of workplace fatalities for female workers. In 2014, 19 percent of women who died at work were murdered, just a percentage point behind roadway incidents. By contrast, 8 percent of male fatalities were homicides. While more men die at work— in 2014, 4,454 versus 367 women — women are much more likely to be killed. It was the leading cause of death for women at work in 2012, accounting for more than a quarter of all workplace fatalities, up sharply from 8 percent in 2011.

Women also disproportionately get hurt from violence at the workplace, making up two-thirds of all such injuries suffered.

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Many of the women killed at work are murdered by partners. According to research between 2003 and 2008, the leading cause of homicide for women at work was criminal intent — something like a robbery — but it was closely followed by women who were killed by someone they knew, which made up a third of all their workplace homicides. The majority of such killers were partners: there were about 142 intimate partner homicides in those six years, or about two women killed by a husband, boyfriend, or ex every month.

There’s a reason for this: a job is often a public, open place where partners can easily find the women they target. “A woman who gets ready to leave a partner who is being violent with her can move out of a house, move into different situations, but a lot need employment, so they stay in the same job,” researcher Hope M. Tiesman previously told ThinkProgress. “That makes the workplace a very easy target.”

Smith had just married Anderson in January. But according to her mother, Irma Sykes, she had recently decided to leave and divorce him.

“She thought she had a wonderful husband, but she found out he was not wonderful at all. He had other motives,” Sykes told the Los Angeles Times. “She left him and that’s where the trouble began. She broke up with him and he came out with a different personality. She decided she needed to leave him. She was going to divorce him.”

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The marriage was what made it so easy for Anderson to target her, though. After the school bell, the only way to get onto the school’s campus is through the main office, where guests have to get a pass. But Anderson was able to get one by showing identification and saying he was dropping something off for his wife.

There are no details yet as to why exactly Smith decided to leave Anderson or whether he was ever violent with her before. But as with a multitude of other shooters, he had a violent past, including charges of domestic violence as well as weapon and drug possession.

This is a very common pattern in gun violence. Between 2009 and 2012, 40 percent of mass shootings stemmed from a man targeting an ex-partner. In 2015, a third of mass shooting deaths had ties to domestic violence. There is a variety of evidence linking violence in the home to future violent crimes.

Despite the high prevalence of women murdered by partners at work, many employers don’t have much in place to prevent it. Only about 15 percent have a policy specifically addressing domestic violence. Meanwhile, it’s completely legal to fire someone for being the victim of domestic abuse in 43 states.