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• Not a single day passed in 2013 before the first incident of deadly violence was reported on the Arizona portion of the reservation, a murder-suicide in Sanders along Interstate 40. Three more people were killed on the Arizona portion that January, according to court documents.
• A man was stabbed at home in Dilkon after he made an inflammatory comment about a gay couple, according to court records. Another man shot his nephew with a rifle in a Red Valley neighborhood after an argument while they were drinking. A 4-year-old girl died from brain injuries she suffered when her caretaker repeatedly hit her over the head while wearing a boxing glove.
• When someone is killed on the reservation, FBI agents work the case with Navajo police and criminal investigators. The FBI has jurisdiction over a limited set of major crimes on reservations when the suspect, victim or both are American Indian. Taking a case to federal court doesn't preclude the tribe from also prosecuting. But the penalties under tribal law for homicides are far less stringent, with a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $5,000 fine even for the most brutal crimes.
• The FBI typically opens between 75 and 100 death investigations on the Navajo Nation each year, Rominger said. They are further classified as resulting from an accident, natural causes, a crime and self-defense, for example.
• The crimes are among the roughly 250,000 calls that 280 Navajo police officers respond to each year, Navajo President Ben Shelly said recently. Shelly said the ratio of officers per 10,000 people is far less than half that of similar non-reservation rural areas in the U.S.
• Greg Jon Secatero, acting criminal investigations supervisor in Tuba City on the Navajo Nation, said that leaves authorities with little time to focus on preventing crimes. More education and resources for people with drug and alcohol problems, or who have a tendency to abuse their family members, might result in fewer people being killed on the reservation, he said.
• On the other hand, victims sometimes are in denial or put more emphasis on keeping around the breadwinner or caretaker than protecting themselves, he said.
• "We have a problem," he said. "We need to not look the other direction."
• Navajo Nation homicides far exceed those on other tribal lands around the country. The neighboring Rosebud Sioux and Pine Ridge Indian reservations in South Dakota, with a combined population of about 32,000, each had at least three criminal homicides each in 2012, according to FBI documents provided to The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request. However, parts of the document were redacted, leaving an incomplete picture of the actual number of homicides.

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