Death grip.

About 1 a.m. on August 5, Santos Arriola-Rochez unobtrusively entered a VFW hall in Seattle where a group of Honduran immigrants were holding a cultural event, and he rushed up to his "ex-wife, wrapped himself around her in a tight grip, and repeatedly stabbed her," reported KREM.com. "Those who saw what was happening say the crowd did everything they could to try to get the 39-year-old man off the woman, yelling at him, punching him, even tossing chairs"--to no avail. Finally, a party guest got his licensed pistol and shot Arriola-Rochez.

Even after being shot once, Arriola-Rochez managed to stab his ex-wife again. She died at the scene. He died later. It was the culmination of years of abuse.

Before the stabbing incident took place, the ex-wife, Rinthya Brooks, had long been a victim of her husband, reported the Seattle Times. He regularly beat her after they were married in 2003. But she refused to file official complaints against him or leave him until he started to beat her children as well. They separated in January, and she lived in fear of him until the day she died.

"The couple's history prompted their Caribbean ethnic group--Garifuna--to not allow them to attend the same local cultural events," reported the Times, "insisting the first one to arrive could stay while excluding the other." But neither that group's efforts nor a police restraining order was enough to keep him away. "Court records ... show that the attacker had a previous record of violence including multiple counts of assault in April this year."

Despite efforts to defuse the situation, he stabbed her to death and slashed four people who tried to aid her. Her four children will be raised by relatives.