Canada: Myths of domestic violence

Article here. Excerpt:

'To inaugurate a Domestic Violence Awareness Day conference in London, Ont., this coming Sunday, a vigil and commemorative ceremony will be held for Dave Lucio.

Dave Lucio’s life was cut tragically short three years ago this Sunday by a .40-calibre Glock pistol bullet to his head. The lethal shot was fired by Kelly Johnson, a woman he had broken up with the previous day after a three-year intimate relationship. When she pulled the trigger, Lucio was driving a van with Johnson sitting beside him. Johnson then turned the gun on herself. The circumstances therefore left no room for doubt about who perpetrated the crime.

Although by no means the first time a Canadian man had been killed by a present or former intimate partner — one-third of Canada’s approximately 70 annual intimate partner homicides are men killed by women — the case made waves because both the killer and the victim were police officers (Lucio a retired superintendent).

The story gathered wider cultural significance because then-London police chief Murray Faulkner (he has since retired) treated the case as a bilateral tragedy rather than a homicide. According to contemporary news reports, he went in person to comfort the family of Johnson — the killer — but didn’t even bother to call the parents of Lucio, the victim.'