38% of Victims Had Been Drinking Before They Died : Study Suggests Alcohol Has Role in Homicides

A study showing that 38% of Los Angeles homicide victims had alcohol in their blood suggests that drinking alcoholic beverages raises the risk of being killed but does not prove it, researchers say.

Because researchers did not study blood-alcohol levels of people who weren’t killed, “we can’t really tell . . . if alcohol use increases the risk of becoming a homicide victim,” said James Mercy, assistant chief of the Violence Epidemiology Branch at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

However, the results of the study suggest that the risk is increased, Mercy said recently.

“At this point, it’s not scientific to conclude (that) there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship,” said the study’s principal author, Dr. Richard Goodman, a CDC epidemiologist and former assistant professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health.

The CDC-UCLA study of all Los Angeles homicides in the 1970s also showed that a quarter of the victims were legally drunk when they were killed and that alcohol was found most commonly in homicide victims who were male, young and Latino.

“Alcohol was also detected most commonly in victims killed during weekends, when homicides occurred in bars or restaurants, when homicides resulted from physical fights or verbal arguments, when victims were friends or acquaintances of offenders, and when homicides resulted from stabbings,” the study said.

Alcohol “could increase the likelihood of risk-taking and provocative behavior by some potential victims,” and “individuals who are intoxicated may be easier targets for robberies and other predatory crimes that often end in homicide,” the study said. It was published in last month’s American Journal of Public Health.

The study examined police and coroner’s files of all 4,950 homicides in Los Angeles from 1970-79. Blood-alcohol content was determined at autopsy for 4,092.

The other 858 victims’ blood alcohol was not determined because they were elderly or children, too much time had elapsed since the deaths, decomposition was too advanced or the cases were not classified as homicides at the time of autopsy.

Of the 4,092 victims tested, 46% had alcohol in their blood, and 30% exceeded the level of legal intoxication for drivers in most states: 0.10% blood alcohol. Out of the 4,950 victims, 38% had alcohol in their blood and 25% were legally drunk.

An unpublished companion study showed that barbiturates, a family of sedative drugs, were found in 8% of all tested homicide victims in Los Angeles from 1970-79, mostly commonly in victims who were female, young and black, Goodman said.

The alcohol study’s findings are consistent with previous research showing alcohol among large percentages of homicide victims in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County and South Africa’s Cape Peninsula. But the latest study “was based on a larger number of cases over an longer period of time,” Mercy said.

He said the study was part of a recently publicized larger research project that found that young black and Latino men are the most likely victims of homicide in Los Angeles.

The alcohol-homicide study did not examine alcohol use by killers, which would be difficult to measure. But “it may very well be that the role alcohol plays is more important in terms of its effect in causing people to commit homicides,” Mercy said.

The study found that 51% of tested male victims had alcohol in their blood, compared to about 26% of females. By ethnic group, 57% of the tested Latino victims had blood alcohol, compared to about 48% of black victims and 35% of whites.

Alcohol presence was most common in people killed by knives or other cutting instruments (58.6%), but was also detected in about 45% of those killed by firearms. The study found alcohol present in just 29% of those who were strangled.

Mercy said the Centers for Disease Control will use the study as a starting point for research into determining how some homicides might be prevented.