Rochester Hills Mayor Brian Barnett at a press conference on the Rochester Hills shooting, June 15, 2024 | Anna Liz Nichols
A sunny summer day at the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills turned into a tragic one after a gunman opened fired on children and parents, leaving nine wounded with the discarded weapon laying inches from abandoned race car and rainbow-colored children’s sandals.
Authorities on the scene Saturday lamented the seemingly random act of violence which led to ice cream cones being strewn alongside bullet casings. It’s a hard hit for the county, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Saturday, as the area is still trying to heal after the Oxford High School shooting in 2021 that killed four students.
Police on Sunday identified the gunman as Michael William Nash, 42, of nearby Shelby Township. He had no known run-ins with the law that police are aware of and no known connection to the splash pad or the victims, Bouchard said during a Saturday news conference hours after the shooting.
The victims
The Oakland County Sheriff’s office isn’t identifying the nine victims or their statuses at this time, but shared their ages: 4, 8, 30, 31, 37 39, 39, 40 and 78.
The 4- and 8-year-olds are brothers, Bouchard said, and their mother, age 39, was wounded, as well. As of Saturday, the 4-year-old boy, who had suffered a wound to the thigh, was in stable condition. His 8-year-old brother, who was wounded in the head, and his mom, who was wounded in the abdomen and leg, were both in critical condition.
Because “bottom feeders” are already creating fake fundraisers for fake victims for their own personal gain, the Oakland County Sheriff’s office shared a legitimate fundraiser for two other victims, husband and wife Micayla and Eric Coughlin of Rochester Hills.
Their GoFundMe page, set up by a friend, says the pair had gotten ice cream with their daughters, ages 2 and 7 months. The family walked to the splash pad where seconds after arriving, they heard gunfire.
They each took one of their daughters and shielded them from the bullets, sustaining seven gunshot wounds between the two of them, the page says.
“They are hospitalized and undergoing necessary treatment. Because of their heroic actions, their children were protected and able to go home that evening,” the page says.
A bystander who told the Advance and other reporters on the scene that he rendered first aid to the victims before the paramedics arrived said one victim, the grandfather of a friend, was shot several times in the stomach as the gunman tried to “shoot through him to get to everybody else.”
Jarrett Schmidt, 43, of Rochester Hills talking to news reporters about the shooting at Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad where he rendered first aid to the victims on June 15, 2024 | Anna Liz Nichols
Jarrett Schmidt, 43, said he had been at his mother’s house near the splash pad when he realized what was happening and grabbed the medical kit he owns because he carries a concealed weapon.
“Some of these people I know personally,” Schmidt said. “I’ve lived here all my life. … I put compression bandages and tourniquets on people; that’s what I was here to do.”
The Brooklands neighborhood where the splash pad is located is the oldest neighborhood in Rochester Hills and is a very close-knit community, Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan K. Barnett said Saturday. The shooting impacts the whole city, he added.
Barnett said one of the victims is the wife of a city employee. He’s been communicating with her family and is focused on supporting the city.
“When I got on scene, I started to cry 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,” Barnett said. “We’re going to do everything we can to help them be able to provide the resources and begin to get our community back on its feet.”
The shooter
The violence of Saturday is a “bizarre situation,” Bouchard said Saturday, as the man police have identified as the gunman, Michael William Nash, seems to have no connection to the victims or the splash pad.
At around 5 p.m. Saturday, police said Nash drove up to the splash pad, exited his car and proceeded to fire at least 28 shots into the crowded splash pad, causing chaos as families attempted to flee.
Then he just left, Bouchard said, “appeared to leave in no rush, just calmly walked back to his car.”
Nash then went to his mother’s home half-mile from the splash pad in Shelby Township. Law enforcement surrounded the home after establishing that he was inside, Bouchard said Saturday.
Law enforcement deployed drones into the home and discovered that Nash was dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
When I got on scene, I started to cry 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.
– Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan K. Barnett
Quick police response and containment of the gunman was critical, Bouchard said, as near Nash’s body, there was an AR Platform rifle laying on the kitchen table.
“We don’t know what the next chapter was gonna be,” Bouchard said. “I believe that because we had quick containment of him that if he had planned to do anything else — and it wouldn’t surprise me because having that [the AR rifle] on the kitchen table isn’t an everyday activity — that there was probably something else, a second chapter potentially.”
Why the gunman open fired on the splash pad is unknown to law enforcement as of Saturday, Bouchard said. There was evidence police found that suggests that Nash was going through mental distress, and investigators are looking for a potential manifesto or social media postings to get to the bottom of why the shooting happened.
“There appears to be no connection between the victims and the location whatsoever. A person doesn’t live in Rochester Hills, he went to a Rochester Hills Park, so it may be very much like Michigan State University where the person had no connection to Michigan State but just decided to go there and find victims,” Bouchard said, referring to the mass shooting at the East Lansing university in February 2023 that killed three students.
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