In a nation of routine gun violence, Pike County killings still an anomaly
Update on Wednesday, April 27, 12 p.m.: For the first time since the crime tape went up, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is touring the scenes of Friday's mass shooting that left seven family members and a fiancée dead.
A spokesperson with the Attorney General told The Enquirer DeWine arrived Wednesday morning to take in the crime scenes and observe the work investigators have completed on Union Hill Road in Pike County.
The Attorney General's Office also announced the investigation's command center for the Pike County homicide investigation has been relocated to 9329 St. Rt. 220, Waverly, Ohio.
Previous reporting: Since the start of 2013, America has tallied a gun-related mass killing every two weeks.
That’s a body count of 409. Another 129 people injured. They’ve been chronicled in 30 states, plus Washington, D.C.
Mass shootings have become so commonplace that multiple websites and health departments have dedicated countless hours and untold funds to chronicle, analyze and study them in hopes of figuring out what, if any, public policy changes might stem the spread.
And yet, the slaying of a family of eight in Ohio last week is somehow still an anomaly in America.
“This is an execution,” said Deborah Azrael, director of research at the Injury Control Research Center within the Harvard School of Public Health. Azrael has helped lead nationwide research in mass killings, which generally is defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed by gunfire at roughly the same time and the same location.
“This reads like a Mexican drug cartel kind of story," she said. "This was a targeted, instrumental shooting.”
Autopsy: 1 Pike County victim shot 9 times
What we know: Pike County mass shooting
That’s not usually what happens in America. The majority of mass killings are domestic incidents and often end in either the death or capture of the gunman.
Take the deaths of five family members in Appling, Georgia, the same day the Rhoden family was targeted in Ohio. In that case, three women and two men were killed Friday before the apparent gunman, Wayne Anthony Hawes, was found dead by police of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A similar tragedy played out in Phoenix in February when five family members were fatally shot by a sixth. In that case, suspect Alex Buckner was shot and killed by police.
Other shootings – the ones that get more breathless news coverage – involve public places and random victims. Those are the cases that have prompted much of the national analysis, such as Harvard’s 2014 finding that the rate of public mass shootings in the country had tripled since 2011.
Again, the Pike County deaths don’t conform. Suspects in public shootings are typically captured within days, if not hours. One example: After six people were killed in February in Kalamazoo, Michigan, police quickly arrested Uber driver Jason Dalton. He awaits trial on six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. Then there was last year's rampage in San Bernardino, California, that left 14 dead. Within hours, police shot and killed Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple believed to be terrorists.
No arrests have been made in the Pike County deaths, and officials have struggled to provide a clear motive.
What’s known is this: Sometime early Friday, someone walked into four separate homes belonging to members of the Rhoden family and seemed to target everyone old enough to talk. Most of the victims were found in their beds, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has said. One of the victims, 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden, was said to have been sleeping beside her days-old infant when she was killed.
Also killed were Kenneth Rhoden, 44; Christopher Rhoden, Sr., 40; Gary Rhoden, 38; Dana Rhoden, 37; Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20; Hannah Gilley, 20, and Christopher Rhoden, Jr., 16.
Only three children – ages 4 days, 6 months and 3 years – were allowed to live.
That fact baffles Azrael. "It seems a strange moral code that exempted children," she said.
Preliminary autopsy results released Tuesday indicated that all but one victim was shot at least twice. Two victims had five gunshot wounds and one had been shot nine times, though the report by Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco didn’t specify which victims had which wounds.
DeWine said Monday that investigators uncovered three marijuana growing operations near some of the homes, as well as evidence of cockfighting. It’s unclear if those discoveries are connected to the deaths.
“We are looking at each piece of information and see where it takes us, without any preconceived notions,” DeWine told The Enquirer. “That’s the way you end up solving these crimes.”
Until it’s solved, violence experts say it’s tough to know how this mass shooting plays into the myriad others reported, on average, every other week in America.
“I just don’t know enough to make any definitive conclusion,” said Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology with Ohio State University.
“And we may never know for sure, actually,” he added. “Even if they catch the perpetrators and they give us a reason, it’s hard to know whether to trust that reason.”
While the Pike County homicides are unusual, they're not unheard of. The most similar case in recent months was the March 9 slayings of six – five adults, including a pregnant woman – at a family cookout in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. It took four weeks for police to announce a suspect in that case, though charges haven't been filed.
No matter how it's tallied, experts say, America has a serious problem with gun violence. In 2015, 155 people were killed in mass shootings -- just under an average of three per week. So far, with 50 mass shooting deaths tabulated, 2016 is on pace to match or surpass that total.
"This doesn't happen anywhere else," Azrael said. "It happened in Paris, it happened in Norway. It's not that other places are immune, but there's no place in the world in which you can count bodies four at a time on a regular basis."
MASS MURDERS BY STATE
Since 2013, here's the numbers of mass killings that each state has seen.
Texas: 10
California: 6
Ohio and Florida: 5
Georgia, New York and South Carolina: 4
Indiana, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Virginia and Washington state: 3
Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, South Dakota and Utah: 2
Kentucky, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin: 1
MASS MURDERS BY YEAR
2013: 25
2014: 18
2015: 27
2016*: 9
* year to date
Source: Gunviolencearchive.org
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the victim with an infant.
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