Domestic violence led to dozens of deaths in Wisconsin last year. Patti Seger is Executive Director of End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, which tallied 62 deaths last year, due to domestic violence. The group released its annual report on Monday.
“People died at a rate of one death every six days in Wisconsin,” due to domestic violence in 2017, Seger said at a Capitol press conference. Seger said victims ranged in age from just over a year old, to their late eighties, and fully twenty percent were elders.
Guns were the most common way people killed their partners or themselves. Eleven of the shooters last year were legally prohibited from owning a gun. “It is really hard right now to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, because there are so many loopholes,” said Seger.
End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, a statewide coalition, began tracking domestic violence deaths in 2000. Monday’s press conference in Madison came on the same day that Madison police confirmed that a man fatally shot a woman before killing himself in a domestic violence murder-suicide.
“When the perpetrators kills him or herself, we aslo count that death,” Seger said.
