A police sergeant, his wife and their two sons – ages 10 and 12 – were found dead in a suburban home in New York in what police said was a triple murder-suicide.
Watson Morgan, 49, a sergeant with the Bronxville police department, fatally shot his wife, Ornela Morgan, 43, and their sons before dying by suicide, police said. They were discovered just past midnight Saturday at the family’s home in Clarkstown – 18 miles north of Manhattan – after Morgan failed to show up for work at the police department in nearby Bronxville.
“At this phase in the investigation, it is believed that Watson killed his wife and two children, prior to killing himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the Clarkstown police department said in a statement.
All four members of the family had gunshot wounds, police said, and all were pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered a handgun at the home.
Though police described Morgan’s killing of his wife and their children as a murder-suicide, such crimes since the 1980s have been known as Family Annihilations.
Communities often view such crimes as isolated tragedies, especially in the US. But an Indianapolis Star investigation found there had been an average of one Family Annihilation in the US every five days since 2020.
One family annihilation every five days! Horrific!
*since 2020.
If my cowboy math is correct (assuming two parents and two children), that comes out to about 292 people per year or 876 since 2020.
With a population the size of the United States (330 million), that means that, for a given year, 0.00009% (rounded up) of that population dies as a result of a family annihilation. For comparison, around 40,000 people (including around 1,000 children) die in vehicle accidents annually in the US.
Not that family annihilations aren’t horrible. They are. But, from a purely statistical perspective, there are much more frequent horrible things that we don’t talk about as much, for a variety of reasons.
This sounds like an argument for public transit
Vehicle accidents can occur for many reasons. None of which include violent assholes that kill children. I can understand that some vehicle accidents probably stem from road rage, but most do not.
This killing is from some dickless wonder that harmed kids that didn’t even get a chance to grow up. He has no sympathy even within the numbers.
It sounds as if you are justifying the annihilation rather than opposing it. I don’t want to think that is your intention. However, just because people die from one thing or anything more does not mean it has the same value. Statistically speaking of course.
I’m not sure I follow what point you’re trying to make… I’m not sure anyone was claiming that it was a significant number per capita or whatever, just that it is a lot, period. And it is.
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Well, not a high likelihood, but maybe a higher likelihood.
Is family annihilation more common when marrying a cop vs. marrying someone who owns a gun?
Those are largely the same thing to anyone outside of the states.
Don’t some countries not even give their cops guns?
I live in the neighborhood. The mom was a den leader for my neighbor.
What’s a den leader? A Boy Scouts thing?
Yup. The scouts seem to be organizing a vigil this week. Looks like the whole town is gonna go.
When I was a kid, I’d hear the older women in my family says ‘It takes a special woman to marry a cop’.
When I asked why they said it was because you never knew if they were coming home that day.
Different era.
Construction workers are more likely to get killed on the job. Also far less likely to arrest a black guy for the crime of walking.
Might respect them more if they stopped giving out “friend of the police force” cards.
Or handing out “fuck your rights” bullets or beatings.
The real reason is because you’re almost guaranteed to become a domestic violence statistic.
I was listening to an 1956 episode of Suspense where I heard the quote “All my life, I’ve heard a man had to have something wrong with him to want to be a cop, but I didn’t believe it until now.”
I wouldn’t say the show is strongly pro- or anti-cop, but it’s an interesting sentiment to hear from that time regardless.
On a somewhat related note, there’s also an episode about a store owner who is too eager for a break-in so he has a reason to shoot someone. Really surprised me to hear from a 50s show.
Most likely explanation is mounting debt or other financial issues that seemed impossible to solve. That’s the most common source of family annihilation. Unless you live in Russia and are a billionaire…
Since it was a cop it’s most likely the end state of domestic violence.
Bankrupcy seems like a better alternative than murdering your entire family, tho
Or hell, if you can’t handle that and think bankruptcy would be horrible and suicide is the only option, don’t take your family out with you. How fucking arrogant do you need to be to think that your family couldn’t go on without you (assuming one of the more generous motivations)?
100%. Those kids could have had a good life
Well, if they just inherit their dead dad’s debt, would that be a “good life?” Assuming a financial situation is why this occurred. If both parents die is the debt expunged or passed to next of kin? If the debt is passed, they would be forced to declare bankruptcy early in their life (destroying their credit), which destroys a lot of options like college, car ownership, etc.
By no means am I saying this is the better option, just seems like both were quite shitty outcomes to me
You can’t pass debt onto a child in the US. The only way that happens is inheritance/assets (say they have a house they owned and $100k in the bank then the creditors can lay claims to that) but if there’s nothing but debt then the debt dies with them
It COULD pass to the spouse, but only if it’s debt jointly incurred during the marriage
You don’t inherit debt…
Debt isn’t passed on to children. His spouse would have had to take it (unless it was structured specifically such that she wouldn’t), I’m not aware of inherited debt being a thing anywhere in the west.
Searching is a bit difficult because there’s a lot of “false positives” from articles talking about how inherited debt isn’t a thing unless you co-signed a loan or want an asset with secured debt attached to it (like a house with a mortgage). So I can’t say for sure that it’s not a thing anywhere in the west but can say that’s the case for Canada and USA, at least.
I’d say just about anything seems better than murdering your entire family. But people come up with weird solutions when under duress.
I thought family annihilation was an outsider killing an entire family. I think I’ve only ever heard murder suicide be used for parents killing children/spouses. It seems like the news is trying to make this even more inflammatory than it already is.
Family annihilators are generally men killing off their family. I think outsiders killing families are just plain old murderers.
