Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. Before dawn one warm Sunday in June 2021, Renata Flot-Patterson and her husband turned a street corner in their Biloxi neighborhood to a scene she remembers as “lit up like Las Vegas.” Police officers crouche d on neighbors’ roofs. Dogs sniffed the yard outside the house where her daughter, Keli Mornay, lived. Immediately, Flot-Patterson suspected the worst.  Nine days earlier, on May 28, Mornay filed a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, Byrain Johnson, after more than a year of physical and verbal abuse, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today. Mornay wrote in her petition for the restraining order that she was “in complete fear for my life, our infant son and my two other children.”  On June 6, Mornay and her 7-month-old son were shot to death and became part of a grim statistic: Pregnant and postpartum women die by homicide more than any obstetric-related cause nationwide.  Most of these homicides are linked to firearms. Mississippi leads the nation in pregnancy-related gun deaths, according to an analysis of 28 states with available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted by The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet that examines the nation’s gun violence crisis. For every 100,000 births in Mississippi, roughly 15 people who either were pregnant or had been pregnant in the previous year died as a result of gun violence.  “We have women in Mississippi who are dying during pregnancy – not because they have medical problems, but because they are being beaten to death or shot and killed in their own home,” said Stacey Riley, chief executive officer of the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence in Biloxi.  Pregnancy increases a woman’s chances of being targeted for a number of reasons, including heightened difficulty for them to leave abusive partners. Mississippi has become a hotspot for these deaths in large part because of lax gun laws and restrictive abortion access, both of which have been proven to increase violence against pregnant women. An intricate web of poverty, health policy and weak local justice systems have complicated the state’s problem. “We really did not want her to have that baby,” Flot-Patterson said. “We’re a Christian family and we don’t really believe in abortion, but we really tried to encourage her to have an abortion. We worried until the day she died.” On June 2, authorities granted Mornay the restraining order against Johnson. Things had gotten so bad between Mornay and Johnson that Flot-Patterson had bought her daughter a one-way ticket to Utah for June 12.  Mornay never made it on that plane. Instead, she was shot to death in her bedroom before Johnson turned the gun on himself. Their infant son, Brixx, was also shot and later died in the hospital.  Mornay is one of 36 pregnant or recently pregnant women who were killed with guns between 2018 and 2024 in Mississippi, according to analysis by The Trace. Eighty-one percent of those deaths were of Black women. Lenient gun laws are among the biggest culprits of the epidemic of violence against women, experts say. Mississippi consistently has among the weakest restrictions in the country.  Studies found women are five times more likely to be killed if their partners own a gun.  “There’s decades of research showing that a gun in the house, and especially a house that’s experiencing domestic violence, is really, really dangerous,” said Maeve Wallace, a reproductive epidemiologist at the University of Arizona who has studied pregnancy-related homicides for more than a decade.  ‘Doubling your statistics’ Yvetty Brown, left, and Monique Wade pose for a portrait after discussing the 2019 murder of McKayla Winston, Wilson’s daughter and Wade’s sister, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at Wilson’s home in Goodman. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today Two years earlier and 200 miles north of Biloxi, McKayla Winston was found dead three days before she was due to give birth to her first baby.  Yvetty Brown, a lifelong resident of Goodman, said she last saw her daughter on June 28, 2019, while they were planning a baby shower. On July 1, a neighbor found Winston’s body on a desolate stretch of road near Highway 17 in Holmes County, just 10 miles from where she grew up, Brown said.  The father of Winston’s child, Terence Sample, was charged with two counts of capital murder and kidnapping, pleaded not guilty at his preliminary hearing and was released on bond nearly four months later, according to documents reviewed by Mississippi Today. The case is still open, and no trial has been set, according to a source within the Holmes County District Attorney’s Office who was not authorized to comment publicly on the case.  Photos of McKayla Winston are seen Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at her mom’s home in Goodman. Winston was pregnant when she was found dead in 2019. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today Bailey Martin, spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said the state crime laboratory is still investigating the case, more than six years after Winston was killed.  “Six years, that’s all you got to say? And he’s still walking around free?” Brown said. “I’m just tired.”  Maternal and infant health have long served as markers of a society’s well-being, said Rebecca Lawn, an epidemiologist and public health scholar at Harvard University who studies interpersonal violence. Yet the most common driver of maternal mortality has been left out of the conversation, she said.  “The need to prevent violence against women cannot be overstated when considering pregnant women’s health,” Lawn said.  In an abusive relationship, power dynamics shift during pregnancy. Pregnant people leave their homes to go to doctor’s appointments, and their bodies are carrying the baby – outside of an abusive partner’s sense of control, explained Joy Jones, director of the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence.  During pregnancy, Jones said people may choose to leave an abusive relationship. That decision can compel the abuser to feel like they are “losing control of their significant other” and the baby, she said. They then may resort to violence to regain dominance.  “You’re almost doubling your statistics,” Jones said. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that removed federal protections from access to abortion has also changed the landscape, reproductive advocates say. Preliminary research shows that abortion restrictions increased intimate partner violence by 7% to 10%.  The healthline for Access Reproductive Care Southeast, an organization that helps pay for abortion-related travel and procedures for Southerners, has received a 66% increase in calls from Mississippi in the last year.  Staff members say it’s not unusual to get calls related to domestic violence or reproductive coercion, a kind of abuse that includes birth control sabotage and controlling the outcome of a pregnancy. Anecdotally, staff have noticed an increase in these cases in recent years, said Kenny C., a healthline coordinator for ARC Southeast, whose name is abbreviated here for safety concerns.  In Mississippi, where the average one-way distance callers must travel for abortion care is 358 miles, the stakes are high, according to a report published by ARC.  “If I get a call today and someone says, ‘My boyfriend threw out my pills,’ or ‘He pierced the condom,’ or ‘I was sexually assaulted and it resulted in this pregnancy’ – that’s not uncommon,” said Kenny C.  Interrupting violence Pregnancy-related homicides are not always the product of domestic violence. Sometimes, bystanders fall victim to social conflict or gang violence. Research shows public and private violence can overlap and reinforce each other.  In 2021, Keyunta McWilliams, who was eight months pregnant, was killed in Jackson during a drive-by shooting that targeted her ex-boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend and her son, now 5, both survived. The victim’s mother, Shunta McWilliams, was shocked at one of the killers’ indifference during his trial. Kenya Webster admitted to knowing there was a woman and child in the car when he began shooting at it, according to a source familiar with the case who was not authorized to comment publicly on it. In March, another man, Joseph Brown, was also found guilty for McWilliams’ murder. Geno Womack, executive director of Operation Good, talks about his organization’s resource center in Jackson, Miss., Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today Thinking about reactions to lethal conflicts, Geno Womack said cycles of violence continue in part because young people become desensitized to brutality. In south Jackson, residents call Womack “PawPaw,” and he works as a violence interrupter. But he does more than break up fights. His group, Operation Good, organizes toy drives, runs reintegration programs for men coming home from prison, and offers safe passages for children walking to school along dangerous routes.  In his neighborhood, Womack attempts to address the root causes of gun violence – deep, tangled and complicated. In Jackson, he said many young men are born with the odds stacked against them. The legacy of slavery, along with racism and generational trauma, have fundamentally changed Black families, Womack said.  From a young age, Womack said, children learn violence can distract from other challenges, such as struggling with illiteracy, having clean clothes or enough money to feed their families. As they grow older, pressures often mount, and Womack looks for ways to alleviate that pressure to stop violence before it starts. Most mornings, Womack said he patrols the streets south of Interstate 20, paying attention to people’s body language and deescalating conflict. Womack looks out for yelling, gesticulating arms and people who walk the other way when they see Womack’s vehicle.  Violence interruption work has long faced criticism for being ineffective and not holding perpetrators accountable. But Womack sees his work as necessary and holistic.  “Law enforcement is only reactionary, they only come after it’s too late,” he said. “We’re there before it even starts. We try to prevent it, and hopefully, law enforcement never even finds out about it.” Pushing for solutions While the forces perpetuating violence can be complex, experts say some of the solutions are simple.  Laws that ban people who have domestic violence-linked restraining orders from owning guns resulted in a 14% decrease in intimate partner homicide, according to a study co-authored by Wallace, the reproductive epidemiologist.  “State policy makers should consider further strengthening domestic violence-related firearm regulations and their enforcement to prevent homicide of pregnant and postpartum women,” study authors wrote.  However, data suggest Mississippi is in no rush to try them. Mississippi is second only to Idaho in adopting the fewest safety policies around gun ownership in the country.  Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, speaks during a Senate Education Committee meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, at the Capitol in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today During this year’s legislative session, Republican Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula introduced a bill to criminalize possession of firearms and ammunition for respondents in domestic abuse protection orders and those convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor. The bill died in committee Feb. 12.  Law enforcement and victims deserve better from the state, Wiggins told Mississippi Today, saying he was disappointed with the committee’s decision. Gun restrictions for people with a history of domestic violence already exist at the federal level, but those regulations are often not enforced in states such as Mississippi that haven’t adopted their own policies. “This bill replicated the federal law on the state level in an effort to save the lives of law enforcement officers and domestic violence victims,” Wiggins said.  But statewide, pregnant people encounter systemic problems beyond a lack of firearm regulation. Those who continue their pregnancy can run into the complicating factor that in Mississippi, maternity care deserts and a high rate of uninsurance mean women have fewer opportunities to interact with health care providers who could potentially identify a problem and help them.  When they do interact with health care providers or law enforcement officers, those professionals don’t always have the relevant training on mental health or abuse one might assume they have.  Kim Neal, who runs a women’s shelter in Meridian called The Care Lodge, said she’s prioritizing these practices.  Her organization is certified with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety to provide training for law enforcement related to domestic violence. Neal says those trainings are available for police officers upon request, and staff have provided “too many to count” over the 45 years the shelter has been open.  “We provide real life examples and try to involve the officers on different case examples to help them to learn how to better respond to a victim of domestic violence,” Neal said. “Continued training is also important for law enforcement when there is a lot of turnover with their departments.” Through her research in Arizona, Wallace has dedicated her life to studying these homicides and continues her work because she believes education can be an effective tool to produce meaningful change.  “I try to disseminate this work to policymakers and people across political ideologies as a way to broaden our understanding and our empathy and ability to know truly what people go through – what women go through – across the course of their lives,” Wallace said. ...read more read less