Words that should be banned: domestic dispute II

Sadly, we are forced to revisit one of our most serious cases of WTSBB.

Three people were shot to death in their house in a Montreal suburb in what police have described as a domestic dispute.

The victims were Alice 10, her sister Iva 17, and their mother Mila, 40. They were shot in the head with a handgun.

Father and husband Dragolube Tzokovitch, 41, is on life support with a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police suspect that the case is a triple murder followed by an attempted suicide.

If a man walked into a restaurant, a sports facility or a mall and shot three people in the head, would we refer to the crime as a restaurant dispute, a sporting facility dispute or a mall dispute? No. We would call it a restaurant massacre, a sporting facility shooting, a mall slaughter.

This typist doubts that domestic dispute would be the favoured term if a son were to shoot his father in the head.

So why do police and the news media insist on diminishing the deaths of women and children at the hand of their father or husband by referring to the act as a dispute? Are they suggesting that the crime is less serious or tragic by using a term that is less potent? I don't think so.

Why not call it a domestic massacre, a domestic slaughter, a domestic murder?

How many of these tragedies will it take before police and typists in the news media find a proper dictionary and word more befitting the gravity of this crime?