Mass Killings In Wisconsin Have Claimed 39 Lives Since 2006

WISCONSIN - At least 39 people have died in seven mass killings in Wisconsin since 2007, according to data compiled by The Associated Press and made available to Patch.

Nationally, more than 2,400 people have died in 457 mass killings - defined by the AP as incidents in which four or more people died - in the past 15-year, four-month period.

They died by gunfire nearly 80 percent of the time (stabbings were the second-most frequent cause of death, occurring in 7 percent of cases); and victims died at the hands of family members almost as often as they did in school, workplace and other public venues.

The danger people face inside their homes at the hands of family members is echoed in a recent study by the Council on Criminal Justice showing that domestic violence spiked by 8.1 percent in the United States following the imposition of stay-at-home warnings to control the spread of the coronavirus.

"I'm just thinking of the toll that it's taken on victims of domestic violence, and then the children in the house who experience and witness that violence," researcher Alex Piquero, a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Miami and a criminologist who co-authored the study, told U.S. News & World Report.

Over the period analyzed by The AP, 998 people died in 219 mass killings committed by family members.

In Wisconsin, there have been three mass killings committed by family members since 2006, resulting in 14 deaths.

Guns were used in 100 percent of mass killings in Wisconsin. Handguns were used six out of seven times.

Mass killings in Wisconsin since 2006 include:

• Five people were killed and one was injured in a shooting in Milwaukee on April 27, 2020. Police found five victims fatally shot after a 911 call from the person believed to be the assailant, along with an infant that investigators believe was spared by the shooters.
• Five people were shot and killed at the Milwaukee facility of the Molson Coors Beverage Company by Anthony Ferrill, who turned the gun on himself afterward on February 27, 2020. Reportedly, he felt like he was being harassed by other employees on the job.
• Seven people were killed after Wade M. Page, 40, the lead guitarist of a white power band, entered a Sikh temple in Oak Creek and killed six people with a handgun on August 5, 2012. After being wounded by the police, Page killed himself. One victim died eight years later from complications due to their injuries.
• Four people were found shot and killed after Tyrone M. Adair, 38, shot his girlfriend, his girlfriend's infant daughter, an ex-girlfriend and a 2-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself in Madison on December 3, 2009.
• Four people were killed and two were injured at a Fourth of July street party in Milwaukee in July 4, 2008. Two men were sentenced to life in prison and and one man was sentenced to 20 years.
• Six people were killed and two were injured after a sheriffs deputy barged into his ex-girlfriend's apartment during a party and shot and killed six people on November 7, 2007. Tyler Peterson, 20, shot himself after a standoff.
• Five people were killed, including a pair of six month old twins, after Ambrosio Analco threatened to kill his estranged girlfriend, the mother of his children. Analco then shot himself in the chest twice.

The AP database does not come close to measuring the enormous scope of gun violence and its toll on victims and their families, witnesses, first responders and society in general.

Much of the focus on mass killings has been on instances when a shooter opens fire in a crowded public place, as multimillionaire Stephen Paddock did in 2017 when he fired upon a concert crowd on the street below his Mandalay Bay hotel room, killing 60 people (two of the victims died years later from their injuries). Of the 867 people injured, 411 were by gunfire.

But experts say mass killings with high death counts are only a part of America’s problem with gun violence, overshadowing the increase in domestic and interpersonal violence.

Lisa Geller, state affairs manager at the nonprofit Coalition to Stop Gun Violence in Washington, told NBC News those shootings and killings are often seen as “private events."

“If we're talking about mass shootings, those tend to be left out because they're seen as private events,” Geller said. “Some of these high-lethality events are inherently random, but if you include some of the events in private spaces, the role of domestic violence in mass shootings is large."

What happened in 2020, a year many Americans spent isolated in their homes to control the spread of the coronavirus, bears that out.

Last year, there were 108 mass killings. That’s fewer than half the total of 237 in 2019, but the number of mass killings committed by family members increased.

In 2020, there were 31 such killings that left 136 people dead, compared with 20 mass killings that left 88 people dead in 2019.

The trend so far in 2021 is alarming, and if it continues at the current pace, the year will be as deadly as previous years. The AP database, current through April 28, shows a dozen mass killings with 68 total victims, five of them committed by family members and leaving 23 people dead.

The AP database does not include those who died in a spate of mass killings already in May, including those at a deadly Colorado birthday party over the weekend.

In all categories in Wisconsin:

• 10 people died in mass killings in 2020.
• Seven people died in a mass killing in 2012.
• Four people died in a mass killing in 2009.
• Four people died in a mass killing in 2008.
• 11 people died in mass killings in 2007.