Kerrville City Councilman Gary Stork and his wife Peggy were found inside their home on Saturday, dead from gunshot wounds to the head. Murder-suicide is suspected.
Domestic violence and guns are a deadly combination. Jenny Fernandez Cabrera shot and killed his girlfriend, Eliyanis Ricardo Verdecia, August 19 in a North Side apartment complex, then turned the gun on himself. In May, a man shot and killed his wife at a South Bexar County grocery store in a murder-suicide stemming from domestic violence.
A victim is five times more likely to be killed if their abuser has access to a gun, according to experts, and more than half of women murdered by intimate partners in the U.S. from 2001-2012 were killed with a gun (the 6,410 fatalities in this time frame is more than the number of all U.S. troops killed in action during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined).
According to the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence, women in the U.S. are 11 times more likely to be murdered with guns than women in other high-income countries, and 54 percent of women killed with guns are killed by intimate partners or family members.
Guests:
- Miriam Elizondo, executive director of The Rape Crisis Center of South Texas
- Marta Palaez, executive director of Family Violence Prevention Services, Inc.