Sheriff’s office finds 11 guns from Michigan paddling pool shooter’s home

Nine people were injured in an apparently “random” shooting at a recreation center in Michigan on Saturday; police are still looking for a motive.

Police recovered 11 guns from the home of the man who authorities say opened fire at the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills, Michigan. But investigators still don’t have a clear motive days later, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in an update Monday.

“So far we have not been able to find any written manifestos or anything like that,” Bouchard said.

The sheriff said the shooter, identified as Michael William Nash, 42, of Shelby Township, had two handguns at the scene and left one of them behind. Crime scene investigators also recovered 36 shell casings at the water playground, the sheriff said.

Investigators have not yet been able to confirm whether all of the weapons were in his legal possession.

The shooter drove to the water playground, got out of a vehicle and opened fire from about six meters away, reloading several times, Bouchard said Saturday.

The shooting came during a particularly violent weekend in the U.S. During that time, there have been more than 14 mass shootings, including a shooting at a Juneteenth celebration in Texas that left two people dead and more than 14 others injured, and a shooting at a car rally in Massachusetts that left seven people shot.

The weekend’s incidents are among more than 200 mass shootings in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Like CNN, the archive defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, not including the shooter.

Nash, the suspect in the Michigan shooting, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the home where he lived with his mother after police traced the weapon from the shooting to an address about a half-mile from the crime scene, Bouchard said.

Police were unable to establish further communication with the shooter’s mother, who was out of state and had hired legal counsel, the sheriff said Monday.

Bouchard said Nash had no previous contact with police and no criminal record. To assist in the investigation, officers seized various electronic devices, including a phone, computers and USB sticks, he said Monday.

The victims, including two young children and their mother, were injured in the shooting and taken to four local hospitals with “various injuries,” the sheriff said.

“When I got to the scene, I started crying,” Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett said Saturday night. “Because I know what a wading pool is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a place where people gather, where families make memories, where people have fun and enjoy a Saturday afternoon, and that wasn’t the case today.”

“Under no circumstances is it normal to have ice cream cones and flip-flops lying around among blood and bullet casings,” Michigan State Representative John James said at a press conference Saturday evening.

Bouchard said two victims were still in critical condition Monday afternoon, but a 37-year-old woman and a 77-year-old man had already been released from the hospital.

An 8-year-old boy suffered a gunshot wound to the head and his 4-year-old brother was shot in the thigh and was in stable condition, Bouchard said over the weekend. Their 39-year-old mother, with injuries to her stomach and leg, was also in critical condition.

“The little child with the head injury has made amazing progress,” the sheriff said Monday.

The incident appears to have been “random” as the suspect had “no connection to the victims,” ​​the sheriff said. Authorities are investigating a possible motive but have not yet found one, he added.

“Our understanding is that he apparently had mental health issues,” Bouchard said during a press conference on Saturday. He did not provide any further details.

The shooting came as Michigan communities are still recovering from two mass shootings in recent years. In February 2023, a gunman killed three Michigan State University students and seriously injured five others. And in 2021, a teenager killed four students at an Oxford high school.

“We don’t even fully understand what happened in Oxford, and now we are faced with another tragedy,” Bouchard said.

This led to a shooting at a crowded water playground

Bouchard said the shooter arrived at the water playground and opened fire with a 9mm Glock pistol.

“It looked chaotic. You could see people enjoying the day and then it was a wild mess,” Bouchard said, pointing to a video of the shooting. “People were falling down, getting hit and trying to escape.”

“He started shooting after he got out of his car. He climbed the steps, reloaded and then fired from the top of the steps in the water play area before driving away. He seemed to do it in no hurry, just calmly walking back to his car,” Bouchard said.

A witness said she initially thought fireworks were being set off.

“We were sitting outside on the patio and heard what we thought were fireworks, but I guess they were gunshots because we heard people screaming, like, ‘Help us, help us!'” Cheryl Delcotto told CNN. “So we ran around, I called 911, but I couldn’t get through to anyone because I guess people had already called.”

The first 911 call alerting police to the incident came in around 5:11 p.m. Bouchard said a Rochester Hills sergeant was on the scene within two minutes – before the 911 call was made. By that time, the suspect had already fled the scene, according to Bouchard.

Authorities found the gun and three empty magazines at the crime scene, the sheriff said.

Delcotto, who visited a home near the water playground when the shooting began, reported seeing bloodied victims and those helping.

“I saw people lying on the ground, I saw a guy who had been shot in the stomach sitting on a chair, an elderly man,” she said. Then she saw a man whose “son came out on a stretcher – with blood all over his face, and it was scary.”

Suspect found dead after police entered his home

After the shooting, police tracked the gun found at the scene to a nearby home, where they found a vehicle matching the description of the vehicle that drove away from the scene, according to the sheriff’s office.

The suspect was unknown to authorities until they conducted a “quick investigation” and were able to use evidence from the crime scene to determine who they believed was involved in the incident.

Bouchard said police were able to lock down the house within 45 minutes to an hour. “There was confirmation that we were there and heard him or saw him,” Bouchard said.

After police attempted to make contact with the suspect, “they entered the home and used drones to begin investigating the home” and found the dead suspect, Bouchard said.

Police later found a handgun in the house next to the dead suspect. A drone that flew into the house as police surrounded it also found what appeared to be a firearm on an “AR platform” on the kitchen table, Bouchard said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me – because having something like this on the kitchen table is not an everyday occurrence – that there’s probably something else behind it, possibly a second chapter,” Bouchard said.

Police said the investigation is ongoing. They want to find out “if there is any digital or written trace that could give us clues” and piece together a timeline of the shooting. Whether the suspect posted relevant information on social media or if he stored anything on his devices will also be part of the investigation, officials said.

“It’s going to be one of those challenges to figure out why there seems to be no connection between the victims and the location. One person doesn’t live in Rochester Hills. They went to a park in Rochester Hills,” Bouchard said.

Authorities also secured video evidence from a nearby camera and were searching for bullet fragments, Bouchard said.

The suspect’s former bankruptcy attorney remembers him as “soft-spoken”

As the investigation continues and new details about the suspect emerge, a lawyer who represented Nash in a 2011 bankruptcy case remembers him as a “soft-spoken” person who suffered during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

“I remember Michael because he was very young to have to declare bankruptcy. He was another person who fell victim to the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis,” Kelli Meeks told CNN.

Although Meeks is a licensed attorney, according to the Michigan State Bar Association, she told CNN that she left her practice of law in 2021 to work as a consultant and leadership coach.

Nash wanted to start his own landscaping company, but after the financial crash, that didn’t work out, according to Meeks.

She told CNN that Nash was about $21,000 in debt and that his car and gardening equipment had been repossessed.

“And he had medical bills to pay,” Meeks said. “He was a young man who was down on his luck.”

The public was still shocked by the Oxford shooting

Saturday’s incident was a “punch in the gut” for a community still reeling from the aftermath of the 2021 shooting at Oxford High School, just 15 miles north of Rochester Hills, Bouchard said.

“None of us in this room, in this community or in this country expected that Father’s Day weekend would begin with a tragedy of this nature that will deeply affect families forever,” the sheriff said Saturday.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement on X that she was in contact with local authorities following the shooting.

“I am deeply saddened to learn of the shooting in Rochester Hills,” she wrote. “We are monitoring the situation as updates continue to come in and are in contact with local authorities.”

President Joe Biden and White House officials are also following the shooting, White House spokesman Jeremy Edwards said.

CNN’s Emma Tucker, Harlan Schmidt, Zoe Sottile, Arlette Saenz and Christina Zdanowicz contributed to this report.

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