Domestic violence-related homicides, calls rise in Henderson
Shortly before 5 a.m. on Sept. 24, police were dispatched to a home near Sunset Road and Boulder Highway in Henderson. Michael Kaplan, 48, had called to report that a woman was sick or hurt. The dispatcher heard “a baby crying in the background.”
Inside the home — along with three children ages 7, 3 and 3 months — detectives found blood on the floor and bed and a baby-changing cushion. They soon realized that the injured woman was Kaplan’s 30-year-old wife, Amanda, who had been fatally stabbed in bed with a kitchen knife.
Amanda Kaplan’s murder was one of nine last year in Henderson and among eight that involved domestic violence, according to police records.
Those statistics cap an alarming four-year leap in domestic-related homicides in a city that’s been touted as among the nation’s safest. Since 2013, police records show, 15 of 25 homicides in Henderson were attributed in some way to domestic violence.
In 2015, three of four murders in the city were connected to domestic violence. The two previous years had four of 12 homicides pegged to domestic causes (one of four in 2014 and three of eight in 2013).
“Citywide, we don’t have a lot of crime here, but domestic violence is one crime that doesn’t have any boundaries,” said Scott Williams, Henderson police spokesman. “These are crimes of passion.”
In Henderson, four of the victims were male and four were female; all were adults, except for a 3-year-old girl. Three of the eight incidents involved a husband and wife; the others involved a child and parent or a boyfriend/girlfriend scenario, police said.
“The Henderson Police Department takes domestic violence very seriously,” Police Chief Patrick Moers said in a statement. “Unfortunately, identifying where and when domestic violence will occur is a daunting if not impossible task. Henderson police understand the many dynamics involved and are committed to reducing the occurrences of domestic violence through training, education and victim advocacy.”
The sharp increase in homicides coincided with an 18 percent rise in domestic violence reports across the city. Last year, 2,334 reports were made, compared with 1,972 reports in 2015.
“The number of increased calls doesn’t necessarily mean the number of incidents (is) increasing,” said Annette Scott, director of advocacy at S.A.F.E. House in Henderson. “Domestic violence has always been around in epidemic proportions. This could indicate that more people are reaching out for help.”
GROWING PROBLEM
Henderson’s population reached 300,000 earlier this year, a factor that likely contributed to the increase in calls, Scott said.
In 2016, Las Vegas reported 16 domestic-related homicides; North Las Vegas had four.
According to Nevada Revised Statute 33.018, domestic violence isn’t limited to couples; it includes people who live together.
“These dangerous actions taken by an abusive, controlling partner will take place in a safe community because the abusive partner is not a stranger,” said Marlene Richter, executive director at the Shade Tree, a shelter for abused women and children. “These homicides are an enormous call to action. We must have safe responses available for people that are being victimized, and as citizens, we must be willing to report what sounds like a dangerous event. It will not stop on its own.”
S.A.F.E. House, a domestic violence shelter, has a partnership with the Henderson Police Department to provide an advocate for domestic violence survivors who will help them through the court process and answer their questions, Scott said.
In the last six months of 2016, the Henderson Police Department’s three victim advocates worked on nearly 1,000 domestic violence-related cases, Moers said.
In affluent communities, domestic violence victims face a new set of challenges, Scott said.
“Economics plays an important role in this,” Scott said. “Sometimes people say they will tolerate this because they don’t want to leave their relatively safe neighborhood and move their children to a shelter. They’ll say, ‘My partner may be abusive to me, but he or she appears to be a good parent and not physically abusive with the children, so maybe I can just tolerate this or try to control the violence.’”
‘SCARED FOR MY LIFE’
Sara, a client at S.A.F.E. House, requested anonymity because she fears for her safety. She said she saw plenty of red flags during her three-year marriage.
“He would track my location through a phone app. He’d call me all the time to see where I was, and pretty soon he started physically beating me,” she said. “Once they feel like they could get away with hurting you, it never gets better.”
Sara finally chose to leave last year after her husband was seen beating her in public and police were called.
She said that because her husband fled, it took the department almost two months to issue a domestic violence warrant because of “short staffing issues.”
“They said they didn’t have enough people to issue warrants at this time and there was already a backlog of warrants prior to mine,” she said. “Because of that, I barely received a three-month restraining order against him since the judge couldn’t see that a legitimate incident was filed.”
Sara is divorcing her husband but worries every day about her safety.
“Most domestic violence victims don’t get away from their abusers because they are fearful that they will be killed if they try to leave them,” she said. “You can’t comprehend this type of fear unless you’ve been in this situation. I’m still scared for my life.”
Contact Sandy Lopez at slopez@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4686. Follow @JournalismSandy on Twitter.