Orchards shooting part of sad trend as family members slain at home are largest share of mass killings

The Dec. 3. murder-suicide in Orchards that left a family of five dead followed a grim trend in the United States: the largest share of mass killings involve family members and happen at home.

The Associated Press defines a mass killing as an incident in which four or more people die, not including the perpetrator, within 24 hours.

According to a database created by AP, USA Today and Northeastern University, the Dec. 3 shooting marked the 40th mass killing in the country this year. It is Clark County’s second entry into the database, which began in 2006.

Clark County’s prior mass killing was also familial violence. In 2011, a man set fire to his east Vancouver house, killing five of his children and himself.

Another mass killing with local ties occurred in 2018, when Jennifer Hart of Woodland purposefully drove over a cliff in Mendocino County, Calif., killing herself, her wife and their six adopted children.

About 67 percent of mass killings happen in residences — not the public places that often grab headlines, according to the database. The victims are also often known to the perpetrator.

But Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, who works on the database, noted the public shootings committed by strangers drive the majority of Americans’ worry.

“It’s the public shootings that are the basis of fear, and in terms of those, the most we’ve ever had in a year is 10 — which is actually this year,” Fox said. “But we’re talking about a really small number of cases, in terms of the incidences like Lewiston, Maine, those are exceptionally rare and very, very high profile and engender lots of anxiety and fear.”

Fox noted the other types of mass killings — those among family or crime-related — don’t cause as much panic.

“Nearly half of the cases are family annihilations,” Fox said. “Most people don’t fear those, because it’s not their family. They don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Orchards shooting

At 3:56 p.m. Dec. 3, detectives with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office’s Major Crime Unit responded to 11505 N.E. 92nd St. Southwest Washington Regional SWAT members also responded because deputies had been unable to make contact with the people inside, according to a search warrant affidavit written by deputies.

Kyle Rouse had called 911 to report his brother, Kristoffer Rouse, had received a text that morning from their father, Stuart K. Rouse, 64, saying he had killed everyone in the house and that his wife, Cristina Rouse, 63, had enough life insurance to bury everyone. The sons were unable to reach anyone at the house to verify if they were OK, court records state.

According to the affidavit, Kyle Rouse said his father suffered from anxiety, but no other mental health issues. He reported he didn’t know his parents to have any financial or marital problems. He also knew his father owned several handguns and rifles.

Kyle Rouse said his sisters, Kristina T. Rouse, 33, and Melissa A. Rouse, 19, and his uncle, Ronald E. Rouse, 57, also lived at the house. He said he’d tried to call each of them multiple times but got no answer, according to court records.

Detectives drove by the house in unmarked vehicles and used a drone to get a view of it. They did not detect any movement inside, and all of the family’s vehicles Kyle Rouse described to officers were parked out front, the affidavit states.

Deputies called for the residents over a loudspeaker for 15 minutes with no response. They used a drone to look inside the vehicles and noted no one was inside them. All of the windows and doors were obscured on the front and back of the house, so deputies could not see inside, according to court records.

Detectives then tried to ping the family members’ cellphones. Cristina and Melissa Rouse’s phones pinged close enough for deputies to place them at the house, the affidavit states.

While detectives sought a search warrant, SWAT members broke a window to see if anyone inside needed medical attention. They then sent in a drone, according to court records.

Deputies said over the radio that one man was found lying on the floor in the hallway, two women and a man were found in a bedroom, and another woman was found at another location inside, all apparently deceased, the affidavit states.

Link to mental illness

Fox, the criminologist, said a small percentage of mass shooters are mentally ill. He said mass shooters are often people failing to cope or who are angry about their circumstances, not people who have a diagnosed mental health disorder.

Stuart Rouse’s daughter-in-law told The Columbian he suffered from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from his military service, along with anxiety and depression.

It was not surprising to Fox that the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said Stuart Rouse did not have any criminal history, nor was there any history of deputies responding to the house.

“In terms of history, a majority do not have a history of domestic violence or any convictions for violent crime,” Fox said.

Fox said family mass killings typically fall into one of two categories. He described one type as instances in which someone kills others in the family, such as children, in order to inflict more harm on their target, such as their spouse. In the other type, Fox said some mass killers see killing their family as a way of sparing them from suffering a miserable life.

Outside of mass killings, YWCA Clark County CEO Brittini Lasseigne noted the number of domestic violence homicides in Clark County has increased.

She also noted the prevalence of domestic violence that goes unreported to law enforcement.

“Anytime that we look at a situation where, like the recent homicides, they don’t have any record of police reports or coming to the house, it could be that it was never reported to law enforcement. It could have been that they accessed a community organization,” Lasseigne said.

While there’s no information about whether there was a history of unreported domestic violence in the Rouse family, Lasseigne noted there’s a variety of reasons people who experience abuse don’t report it.

“The control that the abuser has and the power that they exert over their partner is so large that they’ve instilled such a fear of what may happen if I go and report, if I go and get help,” Lasseigne said. “It can be really hard, depending on the situation to reach out for help.”

Every domestic violence situation can be different, Lasseigne said, so her organization focuses on prevention and empowering those who reach out for help to get tools that will work for them.

Calls for help

Following the Dec. 3 shooting, Lasseigne said YWCA Clark County saw a 50 percent increase in calls to its resource hotline. She said the organization frequently sees an uptick following incidents of domestic violence in the community, as people reflect on their own situations.

Clark County also experienced a murder-suicide and an attempted murder-suicide in December 2022. Although Lasseigne said YWCA Clark County tends to get more calls for resources around the holidays, she said the holidays are not the cause of violence.

“A stressor is not the cause of abuse. It just can escalate the amount of abuse that’s happening,” Lasseigne said. “And it can be a moment that people that are experiencing that abuse reach out for assistance.

“When we think of, ‘What is it that makes someone kill their family, or kill their intimate partner or child?’ We never want to say that like, it is the stress of the holidays that made them do this, like it’s their past exposure to violence; it’s their choice to be violent that contributed to them murdering a loved one versus their choice to seek out healthier coping mechanisms related to their trauma,” she added.

Lasseigne said any time someone with a history of domestic violence has access to a firearm, it can be a warning sign for a potential homicide.

“It is pretty rare when you look at domestic violence as a whole, that an abuser will go and kill their entire household,” Lasseigne said. “That is like the most extreme form of abuse that happens, and it is the most rare thing that will happen.”