Lemondrop

Earlier this week Johanna Justin-Jinich, a student and women's-rights advocate at Wesleyan University, was shot and killed while working at a local bookstore. But what makes Johanna's story so much more tragic than any other random killing is that she was murdered by someone she knew: her ex-boyfriend.

Johanna's case is not unique. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice, more than one-third of women murdered each year are killed by someone they know, most often a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, husband or ex-husband. Men, on the other hand, are only the victims of intimate partner violence 4 percent of the time.

In Johanna's case, she was in a public and presumably safe place, surrounded by dozens of people. But that didn't prevent her ex from entering her place of work and shooting her five times. (Wesleyan is currently on lockdown because the shooter is still at-large.) Which makes us sad and angry -- angry that he was able to violently kill her and sad that we live in a world in which men believe that violence is a reasonable solution to heartbreak and emotional pain.