Among the victims was a single mother of five who was waiting for the bus on Sunday. Larry Briscoe planned to move this week to a suburb closer to her job as a doctor at an allergy clinic. “You never expect gun violence to hit close to home. You always hear about shootings, but it’s never someone you know until it happens,” said her boss, Dr. Kathleen Dash. Police were still clarifying details, while a suspect who may have a mental illness remained in custody. The man was peacefully arrested at his home after a 12-hour manhunt on Sunday, following a tip-off from someone close to him. “He was terrorizing our community,” said Chief James White. Mayor Mike Duggan said no one called 911 when the first victim, a 28-year-old man, was shot before dawn less than two miles from a police station. “At 4:45 on a Sunday morning, it’s not very crowded. Some people might have thought they heard firecrackers,” Dugan said. “I think there’s a good chance they’ll catch him. … And then, 35 minutes later, he shoots and kills a second person and goes from there.” The first incident occurred at 4:45 am. The suspect shot a man without provocation, walked away and then returned to fire more shots, White said. About 30 minutes later and three blocks away, police received the first 911 call about a woman in her 40s who had been shot on a sidewalk. Briscoe, 43, was the third victim, shot multiple times while waiting for a bus a short distance away. Dass said her clinic had planned to give Brisco a cake to celebrate her moving into a new home. “My patients loved her because she treated them all like family,” the doctor said. A fourth shooting occurred at 7:10 a.m. while an 80-year-old man was walking his dog, Major Crime Commander Michael McGinnis said. He survived. A gun recovered by police matched shell casings at the shooting scenes, McGinnis said. Bishop Daryl Harris of Total Life Christian Ministries said he could “feel the panic” in his congregation when he informed people that an active shooter was on the loose Sunday. “Many of our members were distraught as they ran out of the shelter to try to call their loved ones and their families,” he said. Duggan described the victims as “innocent people going about their lives on a Sunday morning”. He laments that Detroit has limited use of ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection technology. It is used in some areas, but not in the area where the shootings took place. The City Council in June postponed a vote on the expansion. “Every detective that came into the command center said the same thing: If we had ShotSpotter, there’s a good chance we would have caught him by five in the morning,” the mayor said.
Cappelletti reported from Lansing.
Follow Ed White at
