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“What is going on?” I asked, my eyes welling with tears.

I had just set my phone down in exasperation, my stomach knotted, after reading about Shamar Elkins, the man who shot his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and, according to reports, went on to kill their seven children, ages 3 to 11. Another woman was shot and left with life-threatening injuries; her child was the eighth victim.

Pugh is in the hospital, fighting for her life. Her entire family is gone.

My husband, a man of faith, blamed it on “evil.” And yeah…I hear that…but I tuned out. The religious stance is understandable, but I felt, instinctively, that it was something else.

Deteriorating mental health.

There is no set-in-stone, confirmed motive yet. Elkins is dead after a police chase, but those who knew him say he and Pugh were separating, arguing at the time of the first shooting (the attack on his children occurred at another residence). His stepfather, Marcus Jackson, told The New York Times that Elkins had admitted to struggling with “dark thoughts” he couldn’t contain. “I told him, ‘You can beat stuff, man. I don’t care what you’re going through, you can beat it,’” Jackson said. “Then I remember him telling me: ‘Some people don’t come back from their demons.’”

Those demons have plagued Black women for far too long. And in 2026, they seem to be surfacing at an even more alarming rate. Four months in, story after story: Black women killed by husbands, partners, the fathers of their children, acts of violence so senseless they blur together, yet each one is devastatingly distinct.

Influencer Cerina Fairfax, DDS, a beloved dentist, was killed by her estranged husband, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia, in a murder-suicide in Annandale, Virginia. The two were navigating a complicated divorce while still living together. Friends say her killer had been spiraling after his once-promising political career stalled following sexual assault allegations. Their children were home when the shooting happened.

In Houston, Ashanti Allen, eight months pregnant, was found dead in a park. The father of her child is currently on the run. He had previously assaulted her multiple times, had recently served time for an attack in September, and was released in February. He went on to attack her. Their son was due in May.

In New Jersey, nurse Victoria Alexander lost her life after she was chased into her workplace by her estranged husband, who shot her before turning the gun on himself.

In Washington, D.C., Raven Edwards, a mother of three, was killed in front of her children by the father of her youngest child after she chose to end the relationship and only wanted to co-parent.

In Milwaukee, Gladys Johnson-Ball and her unborn child were killed by the father of her 3-year-old child, who set the bedroom in her family’s house where they were staying on fire and fled the scene.

All of this in the first four months of the year. There are more stories. There are always more stories.

And even more questions.

What is happening to the men in our lives? And what are they doing to get the help they need? What are they being tasked with doing by others? Clearly, not enough. In many of these cases, family and friends were aware that something was off. That mental health was worsening. But there was no urgent, sustained push toward intervention. No pleas. No offers to cover therapy costs. Just some encouraging words.

Others, unable to accept the end of a relationship, turned their rage on the very women they once claimed to love, leaving children without parents in the aftermath. Temporary emotions, permanent devastation.

This is a public health crisis. Femicide, the killing of women, often by intimate partners, is happening, repeatedly, in plain sight. It’s terrifying.

I carried a heaviness all weekend as the updates kept coming. Metayer’s homegoing services, Jenae’s fiancé being held in Zanzibar, and by Sunday night’s tragedy in Shreveport, I broke. I cried out of fear. Out of disbelief. Out of the possibilities when the mind snaps. Reading about a man who could harm his own children and leave his wife for dead made my hair raise. And just days earlier, I had been editing stories for Black Maternal Health Week—stories about the disproportionate ways Black women die before, during, and after childbirth and what we can do about it. Layer on the economic strain, the mass exodus of women from the workforce from 2025, and it becomes undeniable: it is incredibly hard to be a Black woman. It always has been. Perhaps now more than ever. But I hope it won’t always be.

What can we do to change that? We can tell these stories: fully, truthfully, centering the women and the lives they lived, not just how they died. We can reject the reflex to excuse men, whether that shows up as attempting to blame women for “choosing wrong” or softening the image of the aggressor to protect them. We can refuse to shift focus away from the victim.

But we also have to demand more. More accountability. More intervention. More willingness from men to confront their trauma before it turns into harm. Therapy cannot remain something many are simply “not into.” We need accessible mental health resources, yes, but also a culture that insists on using them. We need men to hold other men accountable. Fathers to check on their sons. Mothers to challenge the behavior they see. Sisters to have a come-to-Jesus moment with brothers and friends. Mentors to ask deeper questions.

Because this can’t continue to be a reactive thing. Grief after the fact, statements after the immesurable losses. It has to be proactive. It has to be a communal effort. We have to normalize calling out harmful beliefs the moment we see, hear, or are affected by them. We have to take the work of dismantling the anger, entitlement, and insecurity, and control seriously that too often goes unchecked before it continues to explode.

Because the alternative is what we’re living through now. And it is costing women, and entire families, their lives.

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