Rochester Hills, Michigan KeynoteUSA—
Police are searching for a motive after at least nine people were shot in what appears to be a “random” shooting that sent terrified families fleeing a busy recreation area in Rochester Hills, Michigan, on Saturday afternoon, police said. authorities.
Police on Sunday identified the gunman as Michael William Nash, 42, of Shelby Township. He stopped at Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad, left a vehicle and opened fire from about 20 feet away, reloading several times, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Saturday. The suspect fired “potentially 28 times,” the sheriff said.
“Under no circumstances is it normal for ice cream cones and flip-flops to be strewn with blood and bullet casings,” Michigan Rep. John James said at a news conference Saturday night.
Nash was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the home he shared with his mother after police traced the gun from the shooting to an address about a half-mile from the crime scene, Bouchard said. Police found a rifle on the kitchen table.
Nash had no prior police contact or criminal history, according to Bouchard.
The victims, including two young children and their mother, were injured in the shooting and taken to four local hospitals with “different types of injuries,” the sheriff said. As of early Sunday morning, two of the victims were in critical condition and seven were in stable condition.
“When I got to the scene, I started crying,” Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett said Saturday night. “Because I know what a splash pad is supposed to be. “It’s supposed to be a place where people gather, where families make memories, where people have fun and enjoy a Saturday afternoon and it wasn’t today.”
An 8-year-old boy is in critical condition after suffering a gunshot wound to the head and his 4-year-old brother was shot in the thigh and is in stable condition, Bouchard said. Her mother, 39, with wounds to her abdomen and leg, was also in critical condition.
Six other gunshot victims, including three women and three men ranging in age from 30 to 78, were in stable condition Saturday night.
The incident appears to be “random” as the suspect “has no connectivity to the victims” and authorities have yet to determine a motive for the attack, the sheriff said.
“We will look for any evidence … that gives us insight into what may have driven this individual prior to this terrible moment,” Bouchard said.
The shooting comes as communities are still recovering from two mass shootings in the state in recent years. In February 2023, a gunman killed three Michigan State University students and seriously injured five others. A couple of years earlier, a teenager killed four students at a high school in Oxford, Michigan, in 2021.
“We don’t even fully understand what happened at Oxford, and now we have another complete tragedy that we’re facing,” Bouchard said.
The shooting adds to the list of about 220 mass shootings in the country so far this year, according to Gun Violence Archive. The archive, like KeynoteUSA, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
Bouchard said the gunman arrived at the splash zone and opened fire with a Glock 9mm handgun.
“It seemed chaotic. You could see people just enjoying the day and then there was a fight,” Bouchard said, referencing video of the shooting. “People were falling, getting hit, trying to run.”
Detectives recovered 28 shell casings at the scene, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.
“He began shooting once he was out of his car from the base of the steps, walked up the steps, reloaded and then fired from the top of the steps in the splash pad area before leaving and appeared to leave unhurriedly, I just walked calmly back to his car,” Bouchard said.
A witness said she initially thought fireworks were going off.
“We were sitting in the yard and we heard what we thought were firecrackers and I guess they were gunshots because we heard people screaming, like ‘help us, help us!’” Cheryl Delcotto told KeynoteUSA. “So we ran, I called 911, I couldn’t reach anyone because I guess people were already calling.”
The first 911 call alerting police to the incident was made around 5:11 p.m. Bouchard said a Rochester Hills sergeant responded to the scene two minutes before the call was sent. At that point, the suspect had already fled the scene, according to Bouchard.
Authorities located the gun and three empty magazines at the scene, the sheriff said.
Delcotto, who was visiting a home near the splash pad when the shooting began, described seeing victims covered in blood and people providing aid.
“I see people lying on the ground, I saw a guy who was shot in the stomach and was sitting in a chair, an older man,” he said. Then he saw a man whose “son came out on a stretcher, with blood all over his face, and it was scary.”
After the shooting, police tracked the gun found at the scene to a nearby home, where they found a vehicle matching the description of the one that drove away from the shooting scene, according to the sheriff.
Authorities did not know the suspect until they did a “quick investigation” and determined who they believed was involved based on evidence from the shooting scene.
Police managed to contain the house for between 45 minutes and an hour, according to Bouchard. There was “a recognition that we were there and heard it or saw it,” Bouchard said.
After attempting to contact the suspect, law enforcement “broke into the home and deployed drones to begin a search of the home” and located the deceased suspect, Bouchard said.
Police later found a gun next to the deceased suspect inside the home. A drone that entered the home as police surrounded it also found what appeared to be an “AR platform” firearm on the kitchen table, Bouchard said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised – because having that on the kitchen table is not an everyday activity – if there was probably something more, a second chapter, potentially,” Bouchard said.
Police said the investigation is ongoing as they work to “determine if there is a digital or paper trail that could give us insight” and piece together a timeline of how the shooting unfolded. Whether or not the suspect posted relevant information on social media or has anything on his devices will also be part of the investigation, officials said.
“One of those challenges will be trying to figure out why there appears to be no connection between the victims and the location. One person does not live in Rochester Hills. He went to Rochester Hills Park,” Bouchard said.
Authorities also recovered video evidence from a nearby camera and are searching for bullet fragments, Bouchard said.
As the investigation continues and new details emerge about the suspect, an attorney who represented Nash in a 2011 bankruptcy case remembered him as a “soft-spoken” individual who suffered through the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.
“I remember Michael because he was too young to need bankruptcy. He was yet another person who was a victim of the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis,” Kelli Meeks told KeynoteUSA.
Although Meeks is a licensed attorney, according to the Michigan State Bar, she told KeynoteUSA that she stopped practicing law in 2021 to become a leadership consultant and trainer.
Nash was trying to run his own landscaping business, but after the financial crisis, Meeks says it didn’t work out.
She told KeynoteUSA that Nash was about $21,000 in debt and that his car and lawn equipment had been repossessed.
“And on top of that, I had medical bills to pay,” Meeks said. “He was a young man who had no luck.”
Bouchard called Saturday’s incident a “punch in the gut” and emphasized that the community is still recovering from the 2021 shooting at a high school in Oxford, just 15 miles north of Rochester Hills.
“None of us in this room, in this community or in this country, anticipated coming into Father’s Day weekend with this type of tragedy, which will profoundly affect families forever,” the sheriff said Saturday.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement on X that she is in contact with local officials following the shooting.
“My heart hurts to hear about the shooting in Rochester Hills,” he wrote. “We are monitoring the situation as updates continue to come in and are in contact with local officials.”
President Joe Biden and White House officials are also monitoring the shooting, White House spokesman Jeremy Edwards said.
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