ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. – Nine people were injured, including two children, when a man opened fire on a splash pad in Oakland County on Saturday.
The shooting happened just after 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 15, at the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad at 1585 E. Auburn Road in Rochester Hills. Police believe the shooting was “random” in nature. The suspect has been identified as a 42-year-old white man from Shelby Township.
Police said the shooter drove to the splash pad, parked, and started firing once he was out of his car from the base of the steps that lead to the splash pad. He walked up the steps, reloaded, and continued shooting from the top of the steps in the splash pad area. He fired 28 shots randomly into the crowded splash pad, according to police.
A family of three was among the injured. A 39-year-old woman and her two sons have been hospitalized. The woman is in critical condition and her 8-year-old son, who was shot in the head, is also in critical condition. Her 4-year-old son is in stable condition. The other victims include a 30-year-old woman, 30-year-old man, 37-year-old woman, 39-year-old woman, 40-year-old man, and a 78-year-old man.
The shooter reloaded multiple times and is believed to have been firing with two handguns. Some victims were shot while trying to run from the scene. The shooter fled the scene before police arrived.
A Oakland County sergeant arrived to the scene within minutes of the shooting being called into 911. The department uses Live 911, which allows deputies on the road to hear calls as they come into 911 before they are even dispatched out to officers. The sergeant heard the call over the radio and sped to the splash pad, where he was there within two minutes and began helping victims by applying tourniquets and offering support.
Police recovered a 9mm handgun at the splash pad, which was registered to the 42-year-old Shelby Township man. They located him at a mobile home park in Shelby Township where he killed himself hours after the shooting. Police said they believed the shooter lived with his mother, who was not home at the time.
A rifle was discovered in the home where the shooter was found dead. “Because we had quick containment on him, that if he had planned to do anything else -- and it wouldn’t surprise me because having that on the kitchen table is not an everyday activity -- that there was probably something else, a second chapter potentially,” Bouchard said.
Oakland County sheriff Michael Bouchard said the shooter may have been going through some “mental health challenges.” Bouchard said police had no previous contact with the shooter and he did not have a criminal record.
“We have some information that obviously we’re gonna run down that came from family that said he had been struggling recently and had been walking about the house with a gun and had some paranoid thoughts. We haven’t fleshed that out yet and that’s obviously something that is gonna be part of this investigation but we’d also encourage people, look, if someone is struggling with very severe mental health challenge and they have weapons in their hand that’s a good time to loop in mental health professionals and certainly public safety. We really need to be in front of so many of these tragedies rather than hear about it after. Almost every one of these things I’ve analyzed, and I’ve analyzed active shooters going back 25 years, have a very clear component that if somebody shared information it could have been interrupted,” Bouchard said.
Police are still investigating why the man decided to open fire on random strangers. They have not located a note, manifesto, or other evidence that offers an explanation. The investigation will include putting together a timeline of what he did leading up to and after the shooting.
Resources available for residents
Mental health services from Oakland Community Health Network will be available from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Rochester Hills Department of Public Services building, 511 E. Auburn Road, for victims, their families, and individuals who were at Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills at the time of the shooting Saturday evening. No appointment is necessary.