Athens Shootings Spike Calls To Hotline

An Athens-based agency that helps battered women has seen a spike in calls in the weeks since the fatal shootings of three people by a University of Georgia professor. On April 25th, UGA marketing professor George Zinkhan shot and killed his wife, two others, and later himself. The director of Project Safe says the very public shooting emboldened many women to seek help from dysfunctional relationships. Project Safe typically averages about 116 calls a month, from numbers for all of 2008 through the first few months of this year. But in May, following the shootings, the hotline received 162 calls. The Georgia Commission on Family Violence found more than 700 people in the state were victims of domestic violence-related homicide between 2003 and 2008. Georgia ranked 14th in the nation for its rate of men killing women.

(AP)