Too many deaths

ANOTHER month, another woman in her prime killed in cold blood.

The police investigation was continuing last night but it appears Whittington mum Emily Miller is the latest victim of the scourge of violence against women.

On Wednesday night she was rushed from the Conrad Court home to hospital apparently suffering a blast from a firearm, possibly a shotgun.

But Ms Miller later died from her injuries.

There are many disturbing elements to this case.

The life of a 31-year-old, who friends remembered lovingly, cut down in her prime is one.

The presence of her 18month-old daughter in what should be a secure childhood home but became a bloodied murder scene.

The fact her other children who were elsewhere would need to be told they would never see their mother again.

More facts will emerge but the police, who were looking for the murder weapon, last night had her recent boyfriend in custody.

There is a disturbing pattern here. You only need to consider the names: Jill Meagher, Masa Vukotic, Eurydice Dixon, Tracy Connelly, the suspicious unsolved death of Ocean Grove’s Samantha Kelly.

Domestic violence is part of the problem. The death rates may be no worse than they have been for decades but they are still too high.

On the positive side we are more aware of them because they are less swept under the carpet than in times past.

Certainly the community and the police are more likely to intervene in domestic violence incidents than say in the 1970s.

The solution to curbing the ongoing scourge is not obvious. The solution is, of course, a lot more deep and complicated than some of the shallow analysis that suggests all men are somehow to blame or that sexist jokes are some sort of gateway to misogynistic murder.

They likely involve how boys are raised in families rather than a quick fix available to the state.

But they are solutions that need to be found all the same.