Michigan gunman kills 7 before committing suicide

[MalReynolds]

A gunman opened fire in two Michigan homes Thursday, killing his daughter, ex-girlfriend and five other people before leading police on a high-speed chase and taking hostages inside a stranger's home.

Rodrick Dantzler, 34, a suspect in seven killings in Northeast Grand Rapids, Mich., killed himself after a five-hour standoff, police say. (Grand Rapids Police Department/Reuters)
The five-hour standoff ended when he killed himself as authorities were telling him how to surrender.

The hostages were released unharmed, and 34-year-old Rodrick Shonte Dantzler died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, police said.

The hunt for Dantzler began earlier in the day after four people were found dead in one Grand Rapids home and three were discovered in another across town. Two of the dead were children.

"It makes no sense to try to rationalize it, what the motives were," police Chief Kevin Belk said. "You just cannot come up with a logical reason why someone takes seven people's lives."

Following the discovery of the bodies, Dantzler led officers on a high-speed chase, crashed his car and took hostages he did not know inside a random home, police said.

Dozens of officers with guns drawn cordoned off a neighbourhood near a small lake in the northern part of the city and shut down nearby Interstate 96.

During the standoff, Dantzler fired sporadically at officers and inside the house. He vacillated between threatening to shoot the hostages and pleading with police to take him out, even asking negotiators whether there were snipers outside the home and where he should stand, Belk said.

But he changed course after several hours and asked how he could surrender. Belk said officers were talking with him on the phone about how to turn himself in when they heard the gunshot.

"At the time the incident occurred, he was talking about coming out, giving himself up," Belk said. "Obviously he decided at the last moment to fire the gun."

The names of the dead were not immediately released. Autopsies were scheduled for Friday.

Records show Dantzler was released from state prison in 2005 after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said he had not been under state supervision since then.

Wrong-way chase on interstate
At one point during the chase, the suspect crossed a wide grassy median on the interstate and drove the wrong way down the highway while more than a dozen squad cars pursued him. Belk said he crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment into a wooded area of the highway, which remained closed hours later.

Two other people were shot when the suspect fired at police during the chase, but their wounds were not considered life-threatening. One man was wounded in what Belk described as a "road rage" attack after the suspect fired through the rear window of the vehicle. A woman was hit in the arm in a separate shooting.

Carrie Colacchio lives a little more than 1½ kilometres away from the hostage situation and said she was driving in the area when the suspect's vehicle blew through.

"I looked in my rearview mirror and see this big white SUV coming up behind me," she said. "The only way to get out of it was to push the gas pedal."

She couldn't turn off the road or slow down or go any other way and reached about 135 km/h.

"I almost got smacked," she said. "I had to go up on the curb."

Sandra Powney lives across the street from one of the homes where the shootings happened and said she had seen Dantzler at the ranch house, where a couple have lived for more than 20 years with two adult daughters.

Powney said she had been at home all day and did not realize anyone had been killed until police arrived at the cul-de-sac in the midafternoon.

"For a while we couldn't come outside," she said. "They didn't know if there was someone still inside the house."

Neighbours said police congregated at Dantzler's home a few kilometres away after the shootings.

Sonia Bergers said Dantzler lived with a woman she assumed was his wife and their daughter, a girl who appeared to be about 10 years old.

Mary Lahuis and her husband had just returned home after having coffee at a nearby fast-food restaurant when police began running down their street with guns, yelling at people to get in their homes.

Lisa Schenden lives with her husband and their children two blocks from the home where four people were killed. She said the homeowners are a couple whose daughter has a daughter with the suspect.

Schenden said she did not hear the shooting either, but she saw the suspect and his daughter drive up to the house earlier in the day.

"Just last night, my kids went over there swimming, and I went over with them," she said.

Outside the two-story, wood-sided home where the three people were killed, neighbors stood in clumps Thursday evening, quietly talking as investigators scoured the house. As officers left, people disappeared indoors and a single police car remained on the block.

The only indication of anything unusual was three bouquets of flowers on the porch steps.

craziness yet again

[Narradisall]

He didn't sound like a man that was 'all there' with the random changing of minds all the time and asking where the best place to stand and get shot was.

[VerseD]

I'm sad to admit that I've grown so used to these "Humanity is Screwed Up" stories that I turn away without really caring, and that admission draws out another kind of anguish. As Dostoevsky wrote:

"Gentlemen of the jury," began the prosecutor, "this case has made a stir throughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is there so peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to such crimes! That's what's so horrible, that such dark deeds have ceased to horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the causes of our indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among us? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are disturbing, and every citizen not only must, but ought to be harassed by them. Our newborn and still timid press has done good service to the public already, for without it we should never have heard of the horrors of unbridled violence and moral degradation which are continually made known by the press, not merely to those who attend the new jury courts established in the present reign, but to every one. And what do we read almost daily? Of things beside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace. But what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes of violence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that it is difficult to contend against it."

[Entropy]

The warrior poet Ice Cube summed it better...

Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in the hood

[Handmade.Mercury]

I'm from Grand Rapids, so this was all over the news for a couple of days. Apparently, he's had a criminal record since he was a juvenile, involving grand theft auto and battery.

[Mr. Murphy]

Originally Posted by VerseD

I'm sad to admit that I've grown so used to these "Humanity is Screwed Up" stories that I turn away without really caring, and that admission draws out another kind of anguish.

I just immediately go look up some good things in the world. There's so much awesome that goes unreported, but it's out there. I don't really pay much attention to the terrible. It's like feeding the trolls. You don't. Just put them away and move on. Calling attention to them, focusing your attention on them, just gives them strength, unless you're working on a way to fight them.

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by Handmade.Mercury

I'm from Grand Rapids, so this was all over the news for a couple of days. Apparently, he's had a criminal record since he was a juvenile, involving grand theft auto and battery.

*DISCLAIMER* Not looking to start one of 'these' discussions, just asking a question....

What guns did he have and where the heck did he get them from?

[Handmade.Mercury]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

*DISCLAIMER* Not looking to start one of 'these' discussions, just asking a question....

What guns did he have and where the heck did he get them from?

He apparently used a .40 caliber handgun stolen from someone's home, and they're currently investigating the gun's history.

[J Arcane]

Originally Posted by VerseD

I'm sad to admit that I've grown so used to these "Humanity is Screwed Up" stories that I turn away without really caring, and that admission draws out another kind of anguish. As Dostoevsky wrote:

I just wonder what the point of posting stuff like this is at all, all due respect to the OP. I mean, there's no position to be had, certainly we'd all agree that murdering 7 people is awful, but, while awful, it's not really a piece of news that's statistically likely to affect any of us lacking any indicator that the poster was personally affected, and there's certainly nothing any of us can actually do about it or could've done to prevent it.

All that remains is the prurient interest, the morbid fascination with the shocking, and "there but for the Grace of God", which is false comfort anyhow. None of which I can say I'm entirely comfortable about admitting the presence of in myself, as human a response as they may be.

Certainly such an event is horrifying and a great loss to the victims and those who knew them, but does standing afar and delving into it's gory details really do me any personal good?

[Entropy]

I kind of assumed that threads like this are started for the same reason someone would throw a live grenade into a crowd of people...to watch the chaos and fallout.

Seems like 99% of the time threads like this devolve into an all out war about the 2nd amendment.

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by Handmade.Mercury

He apparently used a .40 caliber handgun stolen from someone's home, and they're currently investigating the gun's history.

Ah, okey dokey.

[Handmade.Mercury]

Originally Posted by Entropy

I kind of assumed that threads like this are started for the same reason someone would throw a live grenade into a crowd of people...

To kill multiple birds with one stone?

to watch the chaos and fallout.

Oh.

[LordDon]

Meh, I'm a pinko liberal and even I don't think you should take people's guns away. Crazy people gonna do crazy shit, always have and always will.

[Vigil80]

Originally Posted by J Arcane

I just wonder what the point of posting stuff like this is at all, all due respect to the OP...

All that remains is the prurient interest, the morbid fascination with the shocking, and "there but for the Grace of God", which is false comfort anyhow.

You're forgetting the arguably most common reason, though MalReynolds has not done it in this case, which is to (cherry)pick something out of the story for an argument.

Originally Posted by Entropy

Seems like 99% of the time threads like this devolve into an all out war about...

Fill in the blank with an issue.

[J Arcane]

I see scant evidence to assume malice on Mal's part, and being Canadian would give him no political stake in the actions of Michiganers, though I suppose that's never stopped Brits in the past from telling me how "crazy" we are for having such a law.

Still, on the balance, it seemed more in the vein of the "Humanity is fucked up" thread, if he'd meant to start a political war he rather misposted anyway.

[Vigil80]

Agreed on most counts. I was just adding to your comments.

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by LordDon

Meh, I'm a pinko liberal and even I don't think you should take people's guns away. Crazy people gonna do crazy shit, always have and always will.

I've long since accepted that gun ownership is so engrained in American society that it's never going to be 'taken away', despite what the gun owners think.

I still think there's a difference between crazy people doing crazy shit, and crazy people doing crazy shit with a hand gun. Crazy shit happens eveywhere, the body counts are often higher with easy access to guns though. But as I said before, wasn't looking to get into another one of these discussions, as there really is no point given the stances of people.