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The aim of this study was to investigate the occurrence and characteristics of homicide-suicide events in Southwestern Croatia from 1986-2009 relying on autopsy reports of the Department of Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics, Rijeka and police records. A total of 17 cases involving 19 victims were identified. The perpetrators were most often men (82%), living in a spousal relationship with the victim. In 76.5% cases, suicide was committed immediately after homicide, and the same mean (most often an illegal firearm) was used for both. After examining the belongings of those involved in homicide-suicides, two factors differentiated our study from others, i.e. more victims and perpetrators were from the lower socioeconomic class and explosives were used in two homicide-suicide (12%) cases. The greater frequency of explosive used in homicide-suicide events may be a result of factors associated with the recent war fought in Croatia. These data prove the influence of sociological, historical and also political factors on the characteristics of a rare event such as homicide-suicide.

AimTo investigate the mortality rate of foreign citizens in Croatia.MethodsData were collected from the Departments for Forensic Pathology in Split and Rijeka, which are the autopsy centers of the counties with approximately 35% of total foreign visitors, as well as from the Croatian Central Bureau for Statistics for the period 2001-2010. The mortality rate (number of deaths of members of each nationality per 100 000 entrances ratio) and standardized mortality ratio (ratio between the observed and expected number of deaths) were calculated, and χ2 goodness of fit test was used for statistical analyses.ResultsThere were 447 deaths (325 men, 72.7%) of foreign citizens (mortality rate of 0.0015%). A total of 207 deaths (46.3%) were by natural causes, more often among older people, and 240 deaths (53.7%) were injury deaths, more often among younger people, mostly by drowning or traffic-related (22.2% and 18.6% of all deaths, respectively). Most represented were citizens of German, Austrian, Czech, and Italian nationality, with 115 (25.7%), 59 (13.2%), 58 (13.0%), and 52 deaths (11.6%), respectively. Mortality rate by nationality showed no significant difference (P < 0.05). The standardized mortality ratio was lowest in Hungarian and Czech citizens (0.17) and highest in US citizens (0.35).ConclusionsCroatia has low foreign citizens’ mortality rate and could be considered a safe tourist destination.