<\/p>\n
A man lights a candle during a prayer vigil for the victims of a mass shooting earlier in the day, Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Shreveport, La.<\/p>\n
Gerald Herbert\/AP<\/p>\n
A person passes the home where a mass shooting occurred the day before in Shreveport, La., Monday, April 20, 2026.<\/p>\n
Gerald Herbert\/AP<\/p>\n
FILE – Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, right, and his wife, Cerina, at the inauguration of Gov. Ralph Northam at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Sept. 13, 2018.<\/p>\n
Kevin Morley\/AP<\/p>\n
Fairfax County coroners, with two bodies in the van, prepare to leave the home of former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, in Annandale, Va., Thursday, April 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
Cliff Owen\/AP<\/p>\n
Two headline-grabbing, deadly domestic violence cases, one in Louisiana and the other in Virginia targeting Black mothers, have sparked a national conversation about domestic violence prevention resources and mental health care available to Black communities.<\/p>\n
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Many advocates in the aftermath of the deadly shootings have said the tragedies pointedly highlight troubling underlying trends where Black women are more likely to experience domestic violence \u2014 and they see the killings as an opportunity to confront how disparities in access to care and resources make some women and children more vulnerable to violence in the home.<\/p>\n
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On Sunday morning, a man police identified as Shamar Elkins fatally shot seven of his children and another child in Shreveport, Louisiana. A relative has said Elkins was in the midst of separating from his wife who was wounded.<\/p>\n
And last Thursday, police found the bodies of former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and his estranged wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, in their suburban Washington, D.C., home. Justin Fairfax shot his estranged wife and then himself, and their two children in the home at the time were unhurt, police said. Like Elkins, Fairfax was in the process of separating from his wife and had faced a judge’s upcoming deadline to move from the house.<\/p>\n
While it’s not clear what prompted the Shreveport killings or the apparent murder-suicide in Annandale, Virginia, experts say that the harrowing details of the killings echo familiar patterns that play out in homes across the country \u2014 and underscore the need for solutions that address the root causes of the disparate violence.<\/p>\n
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A \u2018silent epidemic\u2019 <\/p>\n
Sunday wasn\u2019t the first time that Elkins\u2019 family had suffered from gender-based gun violence: Shaneiqua Elkins and the other woman who was shot, Keosha Pugh, were sisters, and lost their mother to gun violence when they were under age 10, according to their uncle Lionel Pugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sad. It just breaks you down,” Pugh said.<\/p>\n
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Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher said at a news conference Monday that the Louisiana killings were emblematic of \u201ca true epidemic of domestic violence” across the small southern city of roughly 180,000 people.<\/p>\n
Those trends go well beyond Shreveport as experts have pointed out how both race and gender make Black women in particular more vulnerable to domestic violence.<\/p>\n
More than four in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes \u2014 a much higher rate than women who are white, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander \u2014 according to a 2014 study by the Centers for Disease Control.<\/p>\n
Pam\u00e9la Tate is the executive director of Black Women Revolt, which runs programs to prevent abuse and offers survivors’ resources. She said a logical skepticism about police and government child services agencies based on a history of institutionalized racism makes Black women reluctant to seek help \u2014 and especially vulnerable to domestic violence.<\/p>\n
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Additionally, Black women are two times more likely to be murdered by men than their white counterparts, according to a 2025 study published by the Violence Policy Center, based on federal government data from 2023. Those men are more often than not familiar to their victims, according to the study, which found that more than nine in 10 Black female victims knew their killers, with the majority of those killings being carried out with guns.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Tate said, \u201cdomestic violence doesn’t see color,” and is primarily driven by the prevalent belief among men \u2014 across racial demographics \u2014 that women are subjects or property.<\/p>\n
\u201cDomestic violence is about exerting power over someone that you profess to love and controlling their behavior,\u201d Tate said.<\/p>\n
Lack of resources for Black men<\/p>\n
There has been intense speculation about the role that mental health crises might have played in both shootings.<\/p>\n
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A relative of Elkins’ wife told The Associated Press that Elkins had voluntarily checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in January for about a week and a half for mental health help.<\/p>\n
In Virginia, Justin Fairfax was a rising star in the Democratic Party until two women accused him of sexual assault, casting doubt on his trustworthiness as a political leader. The former lieutenant governor’s \u201cmental and emotional health\u201d suffered before he killed his wife and himself, according to court documents, which say he drank heavily and withdrew from his family after the allegations were made public in 2019.<\/p>\n
Adult and child psychiatrist Christine Crawford hasn\u2019t examined the killings in Shreveport or Annandale, but said financial troubles, marital issues and problems at work \u2014 in addition to underlying mental health vulnerabilities \u2014 can lead someone to \u201ccrack.”<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes some think about the amount of pain, distress and hopelessness they found themselves in at that time,\u201d said Crawford, who practices at the Webster Clinic in Boston and is interim chief medical officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.<\/p>\n
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She noted many Black people find themselves priced out of programs and care for mental health for such reasons as private care costs and a lack of insurance.<\/p>\n
That level of desperation can make some people feel \u201ccompletely out of options on how to deal with the pain he was in at that moment,” Crawford said. T<\/p>\n
Some have said that there are social dimensions to these economic trends, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cMental health disparities in the Black community is not accidental,\u201d said University of Michigan Social Work Professor Daphne C. Watkins. \u201cThey are the predictable result of structural racism\u201d in schools, employment and other aspects of society.<\/p>\n
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Watkins, founder of the YBMen Project which provides young Black men with a safe place to discuss their mental health, manhood and social support, said studies show that 10% of Black adults experience moderate to severe depression, while 18% experience anxiety disorders.<\/p>\n
But Black men tend to forego mental health treatment due to cultural expectations, in addition to costs, said Watkins. Without an outlet, stressors from family, work and relationships can pile up.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a long time, in the Black community, we didn\u2019t talk about anxiety. Now, you have to talk about it hand in hand along with depression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mental health not an excuse, some say<\/p>\n
Others have emphatically said that mental health is not an excuse for domestic violence.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTo say they\u2019re mentally ill, that doesn\u2019t cut it,\u201d Tate said. \u201cThere are people who are depressed or people who have schizophrenia and don\u2019t harm the their partners, much less kill them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shaneiqua Elkins and Cerina Fairfax could have been struggling with mental health challenges too, Tate added, and they both \u201chad the same access or ability to go and purchase a gun\u201d but chose not to.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mental illness is not what we\u2019re talking about here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Associated Press writer Sophie Bates contributed in Shreveport, Louisiana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man lights a candle during a prayer vigil for the victims of a mass shooting earlier in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[97129,97130,97132,97131,97134,1192,23681,59373,88263,87666,59371,59372,73295,61262,82,84,83,97133,12324,3142],"class_list":["post-259056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-black-depression-shreveport-fairfax-mental-health","tag-christine-crawford","tag-daphne-c-watkins","tag-justin-fairfax","tag-lionel-pugh","tag-louisiana","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30057-ap-louisiana-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30115-ap-virginia-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-32538-ap-online-health-and-medical-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-shamar-elkins","tag-shreveport","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}