Eight people died last year in local domestic violence-related homicides, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said Thursday.

Though last year’s slayings exceeded 2023’s mark of five domestic violence homicides, the DA’s Office said local DV homicides remain at a lower rate than the average from the previous two decades.

In 2024, seven of the eight people who were killed, all women, died by the hand of a current or former intimate partner, officials said in a news release. The other person was with one of the women when she was killed.

The first, Brenda Valle, 38, died in January 2024 in El Cajon. Two others followed in April – Ashley Margaret Bird, 35, in Spring Valley, and Janai Patrice Johnson, 31, in City Heights.

The next month, Claire Soulnier, 90, was shot, as was Bev

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