A woman in New York City is significantly more likely to die at the hands of her lover than be killed by a stranger, says a new study by the New York City Department of Health’s Bureau of Injury Epidemiology, “Femicide in New York City: 1995-2002.” Parsing data on female homicides in the city from 1990 onward, the study found that intimate partners were responsible for over 70 percent of the homicides of women between the ages of 12 and 40. Young, minority and foreign-born women were especially vulnerable: Nearly half of those women killed by their partners were black, another third Hispanic. The data also indicated that immigrant women accounted for a disproportionate number of intimate partner homicides. Class was also a factor: Femicide victims in general—whether killed by intimate partners or by friends, family or strangers—are concentrated on the lower side of the income scale. The most frequent crime scene for femicide victims was their own homes. [10/18/04]