Homicides on track towards record low at six month mark

The Richmond Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit lists 15 homicides in the city through June 29. There had been 23 killings at this time in 2014 (which saw 42 murders for the year).

The 15 killings listed so far for 2015 do not (yet?) include Woodrow E. Anstead (stabbed in a domestic dispute on Grove Avenue in the Near West End) and Kempton D. Moore (found shot over the weekend on the Overby-Shepard Elementary School playground), which would put the number at 17.

The contemporary record low for a year is 32 killings in 2008, a count not seen the early 1960s ¹. At the other end of the spectrum, there were 161 murders in 1994.

Five of the killings this year have come in the East End, which has averaged 10.4 homicides per year since 2007. There were only 4 killings last year in the East End