For every x number of men who approach women with “harmless” intentions, there could be one who has vicious intentions or who turns vicious if he doesn’t get the reaction he wants. On the extreme end, a harassment incident can end in murder.

• After a Bradenton, Florida, high school football game in the fall of 2009, a young man approached four young women who were in a car and propositioned them for sex. When they refused, he came back with a gun and fired at them. One young woman died from her wounds.¹

• In March 2009, a 29-year-old pregnant woman was walking home from work in Manhattan with a co-worker when a van drove onto the sidewalk and hit them. Witnesses say the men in the van were “catcalling” the women, who were trying to ignore the men. The pregnant woman was killed and her co-worker was hospitalized. ²

• In Vancouver in April 2009, a woman was killed while running in a park.³

• In Washington, DC, in September 2008, a young woman was eating dinner on her front porch. When she refused to comply with the demands of an unknown young man passing by, he went home and came back with a gun and shot her. She died from the gun wounds, too.⁴ 

• In Orlando, Florida, in June 2008, there were two cars sitting at a red light with young men in one car and young women in the other. When asked, the young women refused to give the young men their phone numbers and so the men shot at them. One of the women died a few days later from her gun wounds.⁵ 

• In Newark, New Jersey, in May 2003, a fifteen year old black woman was murdered at night at a bus stop. According to one of her four friends who were with her, "two men got out of a car, made sexual advances, and physically attacked them. The women fought back, and when Gunn [the young woman] told the men that she was a lesbian, one of them stabbed her in the chest." This incident inspired Hawley Fogg-Davis' thesis "A Black Feminist Critique of Same-Race Street Harassment."

What a horrific, senseless way for their lives to end! For each woman that dies, thousands more fear that they too will be approached by a man who will go too far.

1. Joey Johnston, “ESPN’s Vitale to help with Bradenton teen’s funeral expenses,” Tampa Bay Online, September 8, 2009.

2. Barry Paddock, Henry Karoliszyn, Jotham Sederstrom, Alison Gendar, and Wil Cruz, “Van crashes in Midtown; kills pregnant woman driver allegedly attempted to flirt with,” New York Daily News, March 27, 200.

3. "Mounties scour Vancouver park for clues in jogger's killing," CBA News, 6 April 2009.

4. “Suspect in ‘Hamburger’ Murder Held Without Bond,” ABC 7 News, 23 September 2008.

5. “Teen Dies Weeks after Being Shot,” My Fox Orlando, 4 June 2008.