The Haight case in Enoch, Utah, is a tragic reminder that even though lethality assessments are important tools, they're not a cure-all for intimate partner violence.
ENOCH, Iron County — It was Aug. 27, 2020, the day Enoch police responded to the home of Michael and Tausha Haight after allegations that Michael had assaulted Macie, the couple's oldest daughter, over several years.a national tool designed to identify risks of lethal violence and save lives. But according to a copy of the assessment, which the Deseret News obtained through a public records request from the city of Enoch, Tausha Haight's answers to most of the questions were "no.
. Police say Michael Haight, 42, murdered his family before turning the gun on himself. It happened two weeks after Tausha Haight filed for divorce.across not just the small, rural Utah city, but across the nation. The community was left with more questions than answers. How could this happen? Were there no warning signs?
That was the takeaway from multiple interviews the Deseret News conducted with state and city officials, domestic violence service providers and national domestic violence experts about the Haight family, Enoch police's lethality assessment, and whether there were missed opportunities that could have saved their lives.
Tausha Haight answered "no" to each of those questions, but she did answer "yes" to a question about whether he had a gun or if he could get to one easily. She also answered "yes" to a question about whether she had left him or "separated after living together or being married." According to the police report, Macie — who was 17 when her father killed her, and was 14 or 15 at the time police responded in 2020 — told police about three instances of alleged physical abuse from her father. She also claimed Michael would talk about "how stupid and lazy Tausha is" and would take Tausha's phone in an attempt to "keep her from leaving the house." Macie told police the first instance of abuse came about three years prior in the family's piano room.
When asked during her lethality assessment whether her husband had "ever tried to choke you," Tausha Haight replied "no." She had the same answer for a question about whether he was "violently or constantly jealous" or if he "controls most of your daily activities." Reading the lethality assessment alone, Wolf said, "isn't going to tell the full story" and will likely "minimize the efforts of the responding officer more times than not."
"We can't read people's minds," he said. "We can use the tools available to us to do our best in finding avenues of helping people." Most of all this case highlights "these situations are very complex," Dotson said. "We're trying to manage the information that comes to us as law enforcement, as those who are involved in helping victims or potential victims of domestic violence and the complexity of relationships, the complexity of family dynamics, and the context of situations themselves are not as simple as we would like them to be.
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