Sahel Kazemi Killed Steve McNair, Herself, Police Determine

Nashville Police announced in a press conference Wednesday that Sahel Kazemi, the 20-year-old girlfriend of Steve McNair, had indeed been the individual who had killed Steve McNair and then turned the gun on herself, committing suicide, in Saturday's double shooting incident. Police cited blood as the main reason that more extensive tests were needed to determine whether or not the shooting incident had been a homicide-suicide. They found traces of gunshot residue on her hand, leading them to conclude that Sahel Kazemi had fired the handgun that they found under her body at the crime scene. Nashville Police reported that "the totality of the evidence clearly points to a murder-suicide."

According to The Tennessean, police said they pieced together the evidence, finding that Sahel Kazemi had been spiraling out of control in the last few days before the incident. She told several friends that she was going "to end it all." She had become worried that Steve McNair had been seeing another woman. She had even tried unsuccessfully to follow a woman with whom she had seen Steve McNair.

Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas said that Sahel Kazemi had taken the 9 mm she had purchased Thursday (after she had been bailed out of jail for a DUI by Steve McNair) and shot Steve McNair, who investigators believe asleep, in the right temple. She then shot him twice in the chest. And then she shot him in the left temple.

Serpas said that it was believed that Sahel Kazemi then attempted to stage her own death. She sat down beside the now deceased McNair and positioned herself so as to fall across the former football player's lap. She then shot herself in the temple. Serpas said that it is believed that Sahel Kazemi at first succeeded in her suicide plan but that gravity then pulled her to the floor, pinning the handgun beneath her.

Police had been waiting for tests to return in order to classify Sahel Kazemi's death as a suicide. Steve McNair had been classified a homicide on Sunday, but Kazemi's classification was delayed so as to get a more accurate determination. It was believed at the time that the incident was a homicide-suicide, but certain aspects of the investigation needed clarifying, such as the gunshot residue trace.

Nashville Police had been called Saturday to the scene of a double slaying in downtown Nashville. There they found former NFL quarterback Steve McNair and an unidentified young female shot to death.

According to statistics compiled by the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D. C., only four percent of murder-suicides are performed by women. The study also found that seventy-four percent of all murder-suicides involve and intimate partner.

In a study spanning 26 years (1976 to 2002) by Fox and Zawitz, it was found that 11% of all homicides were conducted by current or former intimate partners.

Statistics gathered at the Department of Justice suggest that male homicide victims of intimate crimes is trending downwards, dropping by 75% since 1976. Only three percent of intimate homicide victims are male. Although boyfriends are more likely to be killed with a knife (47%), they are almost as likely to be killed with a gun (45%).

Steve McNair was 36. He is survived by his wife, Mechelle, and their four sons.

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Sources:

WashingtonPost.com
Tennessean.com
Denvergov.org
OJP.USDOJ.gov