Almost six months into 2016, the seven killings Lincoln police have investigated equals what the city saw in all of 2014 and matches a 10-year-high for murders in Nebraska's capital.
"I think Lincoln residents (and police personnel) are startled when seven have occurred in the city so far in 2016," Lincoln Public Safety Director Tom Casady said in an email.
But neither Casady nor Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister believes the number is a sign of growing danger in a town that generally sees far fewer murders than other U.S. cities with 275,000 residents.
The most recent killing was discovered by police Thursday, when officers checking out a report of a man breaking his car windows found the body of Robert Leazer in a mobile home in northwest Lincoln.
Investigators believe he was killed by Trenton Reiner, who shared the trailer with him. Reiner was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder.
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Leazer's death followed the May 15 shooting deaths of Tina Jensen and Norma Voges, who police believe were shot by Ronald Blake Heritage before he shot himself.
Each murder is concerning, Bliemeister and Casady said, but they don't represent a pattern.
"There is no connection between any two of them, and the underlying issues have included diverse factors," said Casady.
Three women died at the hands of men who later killed themselves in two murder-suicides, and two men were slain in what police believe were drug-related shootings. In addition to Leazer, a 25-year-old man was killed after a man opened fire on a crowd outside an apartment in north Lincoln.
Lincoln consistently sees single-digit murder totals while cities of similar sizes like St. Paul, Minnesota, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, work double and sometimes triple the number of killings, according to FBI crime statistics.
The city's one-year homicide record remains 1987, when 10 people were murdered. Four of those murders came at the hands of Stanley Gushard, who, despondent over debts, killed his wife and three children before shooting himself.
The small number of murders in Lincoln make it hard to draw conclusions from statistics, Casady said.
"To measure violent crime you look at much more than just these homicides," Bliemeister said.
The city's overall violent crime rate, which includes murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, has been decreasing over recent years, Casady said.Â
Last year, it was 3.7 offenses per 1,000 people, he said.
That rate was 33 percent higher in 1991, the peak year for overall crime in the city with a violent crime rate hitting 5.6 offenses per 1,000, Casady said.
There weren't any murders in 1991 but a large number of aggravated assaults contributed to a higher rate, LPD data shows.
From Jan. 1 to May 26 this year, there have been 354 violent offenses reported in the city, which is down from the 365 reported in the same period last year.
Analyzing other specific measures of violence like total assaults, the number of aggravated assaults or assaults with guns over the same period show little to no change in the city's safety, the public safety director said.
In fact, the 1,600 assaults reported to Lincoln police between Jan. 1 and May 26 represent a 9 percent decrease over the same period last year.
Aggravated assaults -- defined by the FBI as those done with the intent to inflict great bodily harm -- continue to hover between 200 and 240, with Lincoln seeing eight fewer this year over last year.
Just over a month into his new job as police chief, Bliemeister said he understands concern about safety.
"Perception of the masses is important and we do take strides to measure how safe and secure people feel," he said, noting that annually 80 percent of residents surveyed by the department say they feel safe.
But isolated, tragic incidents occur, the chief said.
"We and our partners are going to do what we can to prevent those from occurring."
When they do, Bliemeister said, his officers work diligently to solve the cases.
Investigators have solved all but one of this year's killings and are still trying to identify the people involved in the unsolved case, the April 18 killing of Christopher Coleman.
Bliemeister said detectives are trying to identify everyone involved in the shooting at 1966 Euclid Ave. and pin down their exact involvement.
Every murder concerns police, he said, but they are also troubling to the family and friends of the victim.
"We tend to focus on a statistical number," the chief said at a news conference announcing Leazer's body had been found.
"It's not a number. It's somebody that has friends, family members, the whole gamut."