FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 16, 2025
Three Women Killed, One Man Charged
Anti Violence Organization Responds to Yet More Vancouver Killings with Five Urgent Actions to Prevent the Next Femicide
Vancouver, BC: This week, three women are dead in East Vancouver, two were killed at the scene and a third died later in hospital from injuries inflicted by the same man. Charges have now been laid. This is the third known death connected to one individual, and it is also the latest in a devastating pattern of gender-based killings in British Columbia.
Battered Women’s Support Services has tracked thirty-five women and girls killed in this province over the past thirteen months. This is the highest number recorded in such a short period in recent memory and yet, there has been no co-ordinated response. There are no emergency measures, there have been no signal from anyone that these deaths are being treated as preventable. At the moment, there is no official data on these killings tracking these deaths.
These are the essential questions: Did the man who killed them know them? Was there a past relationship between the victim and the accused? Were there identified known risks that could have pointed to opportunities for intervention?
“We have asked the Vancouver Police Department to publicly disclose whether the man now charged had a known intimate relationship with one or more of the women.” Said Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director, Battered Women’s Support Services. “The public deserves to know whether any system had prior contact, and whether any intervention was possible before these women were killed. This is in the public interest.”
The majority of women who are killed in this province are not killed by strangers. Rather they are killed by men they know, and many are killed by former or current intimate partners, while others are killed by acquaintances, neighbours, family members. ime and time and again, there are signs and patterns, there is history, there is escalation and often there are systems that failed.
“These failures are not abstract, they are structural.” Said Summer Rain, Manager of the Justice Centre at BWSS, “They include the absence of consistent, mandatory risk assessment and they include the chronic underfunding of the very services women turn to for protection. They include the silencing of survivor knowledge, the erasure of community-based prevention, and the lack of urgency in the face of death.”
The crisis has already been named, and it does not need to be named again, instead action needs to be taken to interrupt it. BWSS has outlined five emergency actions for the Province of British Columbia to take without delay. They are requiring municipalities to establish a gender-based violence task forces, developed in partnership with Indigenous leaders, survivors, and community organizations, to immediately stabilize the frontline funding essential services women rely on when at risk: crisis lines, transition houses, victim services, legal advocacy, and trauma and violence-informed counselling. The province must implement a standardized, mandatory risk assessment framework for intimate partner violence and femicide across all public systems, including policing, health, justice, family law, and child protection.
Importantly, the province must launch a long-term, province-wide prevention & education campaign to help shift this problematic social problem, to help people recognize early warning signs, support those at risk, and shift the burden of change to those who cause harm.
Finally, the province must establish a lead for gender-based violence within the Ministry of Public Safety and Attorney General offices to ensure a co-ordinated and accountable response across ministries and systems.
With these five actions, there are evidence-based, specific, immediate, necessary interventions that will save lives.
“Every femicide that is not prevented is a policy failure and staying silent after a killing is a choice.” Said Angela Marie MacDougall. “What matters now is not how we name this crisis but whether we act.”
“We are well past the time for declarations and grandstanding” Said Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director at BWSS. “Declaring gender-based violence an epidemic is not an action; it is words that will not stop a man from killing his partner. It will not identify the risk he poses to the next woman. It will not fund the shelter that turns her away. It will not hold police and legal systems accountable who dismiss this violence. And…it will not bring back the women we have already lost.”
About Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS)
Battered Women’s Support Services takes action on violence against women and gender-based violence through direct services, legal advocacy, education and training, and law reform. Based in Metro Vancouver, BWSS works to transform systems and advance social and structural change to ensure safety, justice, and equity for women, girls, and gender-diverse people.
