Oklahoma ranked seventh in women murdered by men

<br>OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ A report on female homicide rates released Thursday ranked Oklahoma seventh in the rate of women killed by men. <br><br>The report by the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit educational

Thursday, October 26th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ A report on female homicide rates released Thursday ranked Oklahoma seventh in the rate of women killed by men.

The report by the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit educational group based in Washington, D.C., said 37 women were murdered by men in the state in 1998, a rate of 2.16 per 100,000 residents.

The report, ``When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 1998 Homicide Data,'' says 53 percent of the victims were shot and killed with guns, most of them handguns. It also says that 86 percent of the victims were killed by someone they knew.

``The truth is that the greatest threat to a woman is the men she knows best: husbands, boyfriends and other intimate acquaintances with ready access to handguns,'' said Karen Brock, health policy analyst at the VPC.

The report provides a state-by-state ranking of female homicide rates, detailing homicides involving one female murder victim and one male offender.

The report says that the average age of female homicide victims in Oklahoma was 34. Seven victims were younger than 18 and two were 65 or older.

Of the 37 female murder victims in 1998, 28 were white, five were black, two were Asian and two were American Indian.

Of the victims who knew their offenders, 72 percent were wives, common-law wives, ex-wives or girlfriends of the offenders, the report says. For homicides in which the circumstance could be identified, 86 percent were not related to the commission of any other felony.

The top 10 states identified by the study are South Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina, Wyoming, Maine, Oklahoma, Nevada, Alabama and Colorado.