Chris Smith has heard gunfire in Detroit before, but he isn’t used to hearing shots on his own block in northwest Detroit.
When he heard loud pops Sunday morning and looked out onto Pennington Drive from his window, he witnessed a teenager firing around 10 bullets at an elderly man from about 100 feet away.
Smith sees that man walking his dog every morning. The man and the dog were both shot. The suspect fled.
“My first reaction — go help,” Smith said.
“Most people sit and record things nowadays. I don’t have time for that.”
He grabbed a belt from his home, got the man to a neighbor’s porch and applied a tourniquet to his leg to stop the bleeding.
“It’s called being a part of the community. It’s called being human,” Smith said.
Around them, “chaos everywhere,” Smith said. Police were driving in all different directions, responding to the three other shootings in the area that morning.
“We were in a trifecta of murder,” he said.
Smith pointed to his right. “Someone got murdered there, “ he said. He pointed to his left. “Someone got murdered there.”
“It was not a normal Sunday morning.”
Gunman caught with help from community
A combination of technology and help from the community led police to apprehend a suspected gunman accused of indiscriminately shooting four people, killing three Sunday morning, Detroit Police Chief James White said Monday.
Police hope the community will continue to assist in the investigation by helping to identify one of the victims, who is described as a Black woman in her 40s who lived near Wyoming and Margareta avenues.
After a nearly 13-hour, multi-agency manhunt led by Detroit police, the suspect, a 19-year-old male, was apprehended at his home in the 7300 block of Pembroke Avenue around 5:30 p.m. Sunday without incident. Someone close to the suspect had turned him in, White said during a Monday news conference.
“Yesterday we called on family and those close to this suspect to provide us information, and it was based on tips from the community that allowed us to take this individual into custody without any incident,” said Mayor Mike Duggan.
“That’s what happens when you have the police, including our state and federal partners, and the community workingtogether. It was a tremendous show of unity.”
Ballistic analysis and video surveillance from businesses that take part in the city’s Project Green Light program assisted police in the investigation. At least one of the shootings was caught from afar on video, and a clear image of the suspect walking in the area was shared far and wide via news outlets and social media.
But while the suspected gunman was on the loose, Detroit communities were “terrorized,” especially fearful for children who were preparing for their first day of school Monday, White said.
White said the investigation is still in its early stages. While the shootings appear random, police were working to determine a motive. Police believe the suspected gunman has had no prior criminal history, had easy access to the weapon allegedly used, and may be suffering from mental illness.
White said he’s confident the right suspect was taken into custody. But Detroit communities are still in pain, said Bishop Daryl Harris of Ceasefire Detroit.
“The needless kind of pain we go through when persons make a decision to commit this kind of violence, it disrupts our entire community,” he said.
Ballistic analysis, surveillance footage key
White and Detroit Police Commander Michael McGinnis said a key piece of evidence against the suspect is ballistic analysis. Police recovered a 9 mm gun believed used in the shootings from the suspect’s home, where he was apprehended.
Ballistic analysis revealed that the bullets from the gun matched the casings recovered from all four crime scenes.
Video surveillance played a key role as well, police said.
“I do want to community to understand how imperative it was to use our technology,” White said.
“It’s important for the community to understand this work that goes on behind the scenes. We are committed to keeping our community safe. And it is those relationships that got us to where we are,” White added, referring to collaborations with the FBI and the Michigan State Police.
Four shot, three killed
The first shooting occurred around 4:45 a.m. near Seven Mile Road and Wyoming Avenue, where a 28-year-old man was approached by the gunman and fatally shot multiple times with a 9 mm pistol, McGinnis said. The gunman walked away after firing, then walked back to the victim and fired more rounds at him, police said.
Detroit police did not receive a 911 call for that incident, McGinnis said.
Police received the first call of shots fired about 30 minutes later and about three blocks away. Officers discovered an unidentified woman laying on the sidewalk, suffering from gunshot wounds. The woman, who was killed, was first discovered by a neighbor.
More:Detroit police arrest suspected gunman in ‘random’ shootings
More:Detroit resident witnessed fatal police officer shooting. It still haunts her
Shortly afterward, the first victim was discovered, McGinnis said. Police then heard more gunfire while investigating the two incidents, McGinnis said, in the 19800 block of Livernois Avenue. A woman in her 40s was waiting at a bus stop when the suspected gunman “walked by her and then with no provocation, turned around and fired multiple shots into her,” McGinnis said.
“He then stepped away and then came back and fired more rounds into her,” he said.
The woman, identified by the Associated Press as Lari Brisco, was a single mother of five who was planning to move this week to a suburb closer to her job as a medical assistant at an allergy clinic.
“My patients loved her because she treated them all like they were her family,” her boss, Dr. Kathleen Dass, told the AP.
The fourth and final victim was shot in the leg by the suspected gunman about 7:10 a.m. a few blocks from Livernois Avenue, in the 19200 block of Pennington Drive. McGinnis said the 80-year-old man was walking his dog when he and his dog were shot by the suspected gunman, unprovoked.
McGinnis confirmed that a neighbor quickly applied a tourniquet and got him transported him to the hospital.
That victim survived, as did the dog, who lost a toe, according to Coleman Brown, who lives with the victim, John Palik.
“John is in pain,” Brown said, but he was recovering, asleep at home Monday evening.
Tracy Littleton, who lives next door to the suspect’s home, said she hadn’t seen much over the years, but when she did, “he was always a respectable little boy,” she said.
“When people said he was the shooter I was like, ‘Yeah right,'” Littleton said.
“Something terrible went wrong. Had to. I’m going to pray for him.”
Chief, mayor advocate for ShotSpotter
Both White and Duggan pointed to Sunday’s shootings while advocating for controversial ShotSpotter technology. City Council is expected to soon vote on a potential expansion of the program using $7 million in COVID-19 relief funds.
Duggan said that had the technology been deployed in the area of Sunday’s shootings, the first incident may have been detected earlier, and further bloodshed avoided.
Many in the community, fed up with bloodshed, have expressed support for ShotSpotter, a technology that detects and locates gunfire using audio. Others, however, have called it a tool for surveillance and have expressed concerns that it won’t function properly, and that police and the ShotSpotter company will have access to private conversations.
Currently, ShotSpotter is used in the 8th and 9th precincts.
“There are an element of the ‘defund the police’ group that intentionally put out false information,” Duggan said. “ShotSpotter has no surveillance ShotSpotter has no cameras. All ShotSpotter does is say this is the location of gunfire with precision so the police can respond immediately.”
