Nine people, including two children, were injured in an apparently random mass shooting Saturday at a Michigan city park, authorities said.
One of the victims, an 8-year-old boy, was struck in the head and hospitalized in critical condition, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said at a news conference.
The other child shot was described as a 4-year-old boy shot in the thigh and stabilized at a hospital, he said.
A third victim, a 39-year-old woman with injuries to her abdomen and leg, was described as in critical condition at a hospital, the sheriff said. These three victims are related, Bouchard said.
The other victims, aged between 30 and 78, were said to be in stable condition, he said. One pair of victims is a husband and wife, the sheriff said. One of the victims is a city employee, he said.
A suspect killed himself in a home in nearby Shelby Township, he said.
Bouchard on Sunday identified the alleged shooter as 42-year-old Michael William Nash.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said shortly after 5 p.m. the gunman drove to the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad, exited his vehicle and opened fire, apparently indiscriminately.
A sergeant monitoring 911 calls coming into the county via new technology heard the 5:11 p.m. report and rushed to the scene, arriving within 2 minutes, Bouchard said.
The shooter was gone, but the sergeant was able to organize a quick medical response, he said.
The suspect used a semiautomatic handgun, appeared to reload at least twice and fired about 28 shots, Bouchard said.
The man had no known connection to the victims.
Officers quickly developed information about the address of a possible suspect by examining a gun at the scene, Bouchard said. Deputies stood outside the Shelby Township home and were accompanied by a SWAT team, Bouchard said.
After a period of time with no communication from the suspect, authorities raided the home and used drones to fly over it and determine if there was still a threat, he said.
They spotted the man dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Bouchard said. Nearby, he said, pointing to the image of a semiautomatic rifle on the screen, “that was on the table.”
He said it was possible the suspect had two pistols in the protective area, but the semi-automatic rifle was not noticed by witnesses.
The man may have had “mental health issues,” he said after speaking to a relative.
It was a 75-degree day the day before Father’s Day, and the splash pad was closed for maintenance for a few days recently, according to the city’s website.
“It was pretty crowded,” Bouchard said.
Oakland County was also the site of the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School, where a teenager killed four classmates using a semiautomatic weapon his father bought for him just days earlier. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in prison and, in a landmark casehis parents – who were summoned to school that day amid concerns about their son’s fascination with guns but failed to warn him that he had access to one – were convicted of involuntary manslaughter for not being able to avoid the attack.
Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan K. Barnett said it was a particularly harrowing attack for the 1920s suburb about 30 miles north of Detroit.
“It’s a horrible scene when a child is involved,” he said.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
