A day after a shooting at a suburban Detroit water park injured nine people, including children, on Sunday, residents struggled to comprehend what had happened, with bewilderment, fear and shock.
“Last night I had trouble falling asleep. It’s hard to function this morning,” said Alex Roser, a 33-year-old pharmacy technician who said he grew up in the area.
On Saturday afternoon, a gunman opened fire at a splash pad — a children’s play area with blue cylinders that spray water — in Rochester Hills. Police identified the shooter as Michael William Nash, 42, and said the handgun recovered at the scene was purchased legally in 2015 and registered in his name.
Authorities said the motive was not yet known but the attack appeared to be random. Mr. Nash was found dead with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound later Saturday in his nearby home, they said.
Among the injured were an 8-year-old boy, a 4-year-old boy and their 39-year-old mother, authorities said. Others in the park that day were a city employee and 14 of his friends and family members. The city worker’s wife was shot, Mayor Bryan Barnett of Rochester Hills said Sunday. He added that two of the victims were in critical condition, while the others were stable.
While the community was in shock, it was not lost on residents that this was the second shooting in the area in recent years: in 2021, at Oxford High School in the same county, a student shot and killed four of his classmates and injured seven others. And many were horrified that this time it happened so close to home, in a city that promotes itself on his website as one of the safest in America.
At a press conference Sunday, Oakland County Executive David Coulter lamented that authorities were already accustomed to responding to these types of shootings. “We’re getting too good at this and I’m disgusted with it.”
On Sunday, mental health professionals from the Oakland Community Health Network offered counseling services to community members affected by the shooting in the cafeteria of a city building.
Trisha Zizumbo, the health network’s director of operations, remembers providing similar services after the Oxford High shooting.
“Unfortunately, we learned a lot” from the situation in Oxford, Ms. Zizumbo said. “I feel like we did a better job this time of settling in quicker and quicker and knowing what to do, unfortunately, in a tragedy like this.”
Rochester Hills is an affluent suburb of 76,000 located just 28 miles north of Detroit, with a larger population of older residents. It’s a city filled with shopping centers without a clearly defined downtown core, but its neighboring city of Rochester is well known throughout the state for its Christmas lights.
Mayor Barnett said the city will review all procedures taken in responding to the shooting, but at this point he said nothing appears to be a failure.
Mr. Barnett, mayor since 2006, stressed that the shooting took place in “one of the most vulnerable places”.
“You know who’s going to be in a paddling pool on a sunny afternoon. They are children, and most likely children under the age of 10,” he said.
Mr. Nash lived in Dequindre Estates, a small, quiet trailer park neighborhood less than two miles from the scene. He reportedly lived with his mother, the Oakland County sheriff said, and apparently suffered from mental health issues, but had no prior contact with police.
Kyleen Duchene McDougal, 61, lives next door to Mr. Nash’s home and said that although she had known him for a long time, they had never had in-depth conversations. Mr. Nash’s mother recently left for a cross-country trip, Ms. Duchene McDougal said, and before the trip she had expressed concerns about leaving her son alone for a long period of time due to his mental health issues.
Other neighbors recalled their shock and fear when police came looking for Mr. Nash on Saturday in their neighborhood, which they described as a safe place where children ride bikes, where families picnic in a gazebo and fish in the community pond.
Mr. Roser, who lives three doors from Mr. Nash’s house, said he grew up in Rochester Hills and “didn’t move from here because I felt safe.” So the idea of a shooting so close to home was “sickening,” he said.
He added that he saw Mr. Nash that morning mowing his lawn, noting that “he didn’t seem distressed.” He looked like he was just cutting his grass.
Kyle LaFerle, 40, a contractor, said he walked around the neighborhood Sunday and found what appeared to be part of a bullet on the ground. Mr. LaFerle, who lives around the corner from Mr. Nash’s residence, said no place is safe from shootings.
“It shows this is happening everywhere,” he said.
