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.
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 — 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.
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.
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.
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 — and underscore the need for solutions that address the root causes of the disparate violence.
A ‘silent epidemic’
Sunday wasn’t the first time that Elkins’ 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.
“It’s sad. It just breaks you down,” Pugh said.
Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher said at a news conference Monday that the Louisiana killings were emblematic of “a true epidemic of domestic violence” across the small southern city of roughly 180,000 people.
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.
More than four in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes — a much higher rate than women who are white, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander — according to a 2014 study by the Centers for Disease Control.
Paméla 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 — and especially vulnerable to domestic violence.
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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.
Ultimately, Tate said, “domestic violence doesn’t see color,” and is primarily driven by the prevalent belief among men — across racial demographics — that women are subjects or property.
“Domestic violence is about exerting power over someone that you profess to love and controlling their behavior,” Tate said.
Lack of resources for Black men
There has been intense speculation about the role that mental health crises might have played in both shootings.
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.
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 “mental and emotional health” 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.
Adult and child psychiatrist Christine Crawford hasn’t examined the killings in Shreveport or Annandale, but said financial troubles, marital issues and problems at work — in addition to underlying mental health vulnerabilities — can lead someone to “crack.”
“It makes some think about the amount of pain, distress and hopelessness they found themselves in at that time,” said Crawford, who practices at the Webster Clinic in Boston and is interim chief medical officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
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.
That level of desperation can make some people feel “completely out of options on how to deal with the pain he was in at that moment,” Crawford said. T
Some have said that there are social dimensions to these economic trends, too.
“Mental health disparities in the Black community is not accidental,” said University of Michigan Social Work Professor Daphne C. Watkins. “They are the predictable result of structural racism” in schools, employment and other aspects of society.
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.
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.
“For a long time, in the Black community, we didn’t talk about anxiety. Now, you have to talk about it hand in hand along with depression.”
Mental health not an excuse, some say
Others have emphatically said that mental health is not an excuse for domestic violence.
“To say they’re mentally ill, that doesn’t cut it,” Tate said. “There are people who are depressed or people who have schizophrenia and don’t harm the their partners, much less kill them.”
Shaneiqua Elkins and Cerina Fairfax could have been struggling with mental health challenges too, Tate added, and they both “had the same access or ability to go and purchase a gun” but chose not to.
“The mental illness is not what we’re talking about here,” she said.
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Associated Press writer Sophie Bates contributed in Shreveport, Louisiana.
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