PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — Two of the nine people wounded in a weekend shooting at a suburban Detroit splash pad remain hospitalized in critical condition Monday, including an 8-year-old boy who has “made amazing progress” despite being shot in the head, authorities said.
The child's 4-year-old brother was shot in the leg, and the boys’ mother was hit in the abdomen and leg during the random attack in Rochester Hills. It was one of at least four mass shootings in the U.S. on Saturday and early Sunday.
“Reeling would be an understatement,” Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said of the family. “A family of four and three are in the hospital.”
Michael Nash, 42, fired as many as 36 times Saturday, stopping several times to reload, police said. He subsequently went home to Shelby Township, where he killed himself.
Bouchard said a motive could be hard to pin down.
Nash had no connection to the victims or the splash pad, a popular way for people, especially kids, to play in fountains and water sprays.
“It appears he had been musing about different things, saying ‘Shut your phone off, we’re being watched, they are listening to us,’” the sheriff said, citing interviews with Nash's mother. “Walking around the house with weapons ... and talking about how the government was tracking him.
“Clearly it appears to me, as a lay person, he's had some mental health things going on,” Bouchard said. “At this point we still have no information that was brought to anyone's attention.”
Nash's mother lived with him but was away from home when the shooting happened.
Michigan has a new law that empowers a judge to take away someone's guns if a family member steps forward about possible threats to that person or others.
The 9 mm Glock handgun used in the splash pad shooting was purchased legally by Nash in 2015, Bouchard said. Investigators found 11 more weapons at the home.
“He’s a loner. The blinds are always pulled over there,” neighbor Kyleen Duchene told The Detroit News.
Rochester Hills is about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Oxford, where in 2021 a 15-year-old fatally shot four high school students.
Elsewhere in the U.S. over the weekend, six people were shot in a residential neighborhood in Lathrup Village, another Detroit suburb. Seven people were shot at a party in Methuen, Massachusetts, and eight people were shot during a Juneteenth celebration in Round Rock, Texas. Two people were killed in that shooting.
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AP reporter Kathleen Foody in Chicago contributed to this story.
