In domestic violence shootings, kids often become collateral damage

Two-thirds of gunshot victims in America survive but for children who are victims of domestic violence shootings, those outcomes are reversed.

Many parents worry that a shooting could happen at their children’s school but a Trace analysis found that three times as many kids were shot in domestic violence incidents between 2018 and 2022.

Linden Police say Krzysztof Nieroda shot his wife and children at their home at 18 Chatham Place around 9:30 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023, before he told a family member what he had done over a phone call, and then shot himself in the head.

His wife, Justyna Nieroda, 41, and their 13-year-old daughter Natalie Nieroda were found dead at the scene by Linden police. The gun was still in Krzysztof Nieroda’s hand when police got to the home.

Their son, 14-year-old Sebastian Nieroda, was taken to Newark University Hospital in critical condition but he died later that day.

Nearly half of all female homicide victims are killed by a current or former dating partner, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Black women in the U.S. are twice as likely as white women to be fatally shot by an intimate partner, gun control advocates say, and young black women are almost three times more likely to be shot and killed by an intimate partner than white women in the same age group.

Despite growing evidence that an increased rate of gun ownership disproportionately endangers women and children in abusive homes, laws have not evolved enough to address the uniquely American issue, gun control advocates and domestic abuse survivors say.

“We have an unforgivably high rate of intimate partner violence homicide in this country,” says Burd-Sharps, the director of research at Everytown, “and yet we know what can protect women.”

Studies have found that red flag laws led to reductions in firearm suicide rates in California, Connecticut, and Indiana, which are among at least 21 states and the District of Columbia that have versions of the measure in place.

Before 2018, only five states had some version of red flag laws.

On June 25, 2022, President Joe Biden signed largely toothless legislation that included several changes to U.S. gun laws, but the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act authorized the federal government to issue grants to individual states if they enact and enforce red flag laws.

A firearm increases the likelihood that domestic violence will become deadly.

On average, 24 people per minute—and more than 12 million men and women every year—are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In 2021, the hotline received more calls and messages than in any year since the organization’s inception in 1996.

“Every country is home to domestic abusers. Only America gives them easy access to an arsenal and ammunition,” says Shannon Watts, who founded the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action.

According to Watts, women in the U.S. are 21 times more likely to die by firearm homicides than women in other high-income nations.

“Guns are so easily accessible in this country,” she says. “When you combine domestic violence with guns, it becomes all the more lethal.”

Nearly 1 million women in the U.S. today have survived being shot or shot at by an intimate partner.

More than half of mass shootings — those involving four or more victims — are “actually shootings of intimate partners and families,” said April Zeoli, Ph.D., an associate professor and the policy core director for the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan.

Even in cases where family members and partners are not killed, the perpetrators of mass shootings often have a history of domestic violence, she said.

“Taken together, around 68% of mass shooters either killed their family and intimate partners, or they have a history of domestic violence,” Zeoli said, citing a study that looked at the links between domestic violence and fatal mass shootings.

“It’s undeniable that gun ownership plays a really important part in all of this,” says Sarah Burd-Sharps, the director of research at Everytown. “This is an enormous issue that’s affecting families, and especially the next generation, in a way that we really have to get on top of.”

New Jersey’s first four intimate partner deaths this year occurred in Hudson County, including the shooting deaths of two Jersey City teachers in what officials said were separate domestic violence incidents.

On Feb. 12, 34-year-old mother-of-two Stephanie Vil was shot to death in Trenton, and the man arrested for murder was the father of her infant, Her boyfriend – Jamar Leonard, 38, of Burlington Township – has been charged with murder and weapons offenses.

After relatives told Stephanie Vil’s 10-year-old son that his mother had been killed, he wordlessly walked over to his 3-month-old sister and picked her up to hold her

Before 20 children died in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and before 19 students died at Robb Elementary School, the shooters turned their guns on family members.

A man who shot his five children, wife and mother-in-law in Enoch, Utah, in January had previously been investigated for allegedly choking his daughter.

Prosecutors said an Ohio man killed his three sons with a rifle and then he shot his wife as his daughter ran to get help.

As rates of gun violence increase in the United States, experts have identified a disturbing, decades-long trend: There’s a clear intersection between mass shootings and domestic violence toward family members.  

During the height of the pandemic, Chasity Cooper decided it was time to leave her abusive relationship. Cooper called her mom, Angela Brooks, and told her the plan: She’d pay her boyfriend money she owed him, say goodbye, and then head to stay with relatives in Atlanta. 

The next night, Brooks got another call, a FaceTime from her 10-year-old granddaughter, Nie’Mae. Nie’Mae asked for help, then flipped the camera and showed Brooks a horrifying scene: Cooper’s body on the floor, a few feet away from another body — Nie’Mae’s 6-year-old sister, Doryan.

Cooper’s boyfriend had shot them all, as well as Cooper’s teenage daughter, Zoriya. Nie’Mae and Zoriya would live. Doryan and Cooper would not.

In America, if you’re shot by another person, you’re much more likely to survive than die; two-thirds of gunshot victims eventually make it home. But for child victims of domestic gun violence, those outcomes are flipped. 

Doryan was one of at least 621 children shot and killed in a domestic violence incident in the last five years — an all-too-common form of violence that often plays out at home and receives a fraction of the media coverage dedicated to school shootings, which are both less frequent and less deadly.

Eight times as many children were shot and killed in domestic violence incidents as in school shootings from 2018 through 2022, The Trace’s Jennifer Mascia reveals in a sweeping investigation, published in partnership with USA TODAY.

Most of those children were intentionally shot by a parent, stepparent, or guardian — oftentimes collateral damage in attacks targeting romantic partners.

“It’s to hurt that victim,” said Ruth Glenn, president of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and herself a survivor of domestic abuse. “‘You will never, ever have power. You will never, ever control. And I am willing to annihilate my children, your children to watch you suffer.’”

More than two-thirds of parents worry a shooting could happen at their children’s school, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. But home is a far more dangerous place for kids.

In the five years ending in 2022, at least 866 kids ages 17 and younger were shot in domestic violence incidents, according to an analysis by The Trace of data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive; 621 of them died.

In that same timeframe, 268 children were shot at school, 75 of them fatally, according to an analysis of data from the CHDS School Shooting Safety Compendium, a federally funded tracker launched after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the Gun Violence Archive.

All told, three times as many children were shot in domestic violence incidents as in school shootings and eight times as many died. The majority of those children were intentionally shot by a parent, stepparent, or guardian — the very people expected to protect them. 

Intimate partner violence and gun violence in the United States are inextricably linked, impacting millions of women, families, and communities across the country.

Abusive partners with firearms are five times more likely to kill their female victims, and guns further exacerbate the power and control dynamic commonly used by abusers to inflict emotional abuse and exert coercive control over their victims.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, available 24/7, for confidential assistance from a trained advocate.

You can also find more resources on legal assistance in English and Spanish at WomensLaw.org.