Splash Pad shooter was paranoid and thought government was spying on him, sheriff says

Lina Portman2 weeks ago

1 6 minutes read

Pontiac — Michael Nash paced his Shelby Township trailer holding one of his many guns, warning his mother to turn off her phone because the government was spying on them, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Monday .

Nash, 42, had a history of mental health issues before opening fire Saturday on the crowd at the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills, Bouchard said. Early in the investigation into the shooting, Bouchard said Nash's mother told detectives about her son's growing paranoia, although Bouchard said the woman had since retained an attorney and stopped to speak to the police.

“It seems like (Nash) thought about different things and said, ‘Turn off your phone. We are being watched. They listen to us,'” Bouchard said. “(Nash) was walking around the house with guns, talking about how they were listening to him and how the government was hunting him. Obviously, it seems to me, as a layman, that he got mental health problems.”

At a news conference Monday at the Oakland County Sheriff's headquarters in Pontiac, Bouchard said the shooting is an extreme example of the intersection of mental illness and the violence his deputies and police in across the country are facing in record numbers.

A day earlier, Nash's neighbors told the Detroit News that he kept to himself and did not respond to friendly greetings. Nash's father died three years ago, according to neighbors and a funeral notice from Dignity Funeral Home, leaving Nash and his mother alone in the trailer.

More: Splash Pad shooter's neighbors fear they're next, call him 'loner'

While Nash's mother was traveling out of state, he drove his car to the water park about a mile and a half south of the trailer they shared in the Dequindre Estates community, Bouchard said . When Nash arrived at his destination, he got out of the car, pulled out a pair of pistols and opened fire with one of the guns, a Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun. He emptied three magazines, leaving behind 30 shell casings, the sheriff said.

Nine people, including two children, were injured. The sheriff said two of the victims were in critical condition Monday, including an 8-year-old boy who was shot in the head, although he was making “incredible progress.”

After the shooting, Nash left one of the guns at the scene and returned to his trailer. As police approached him, after tracing the legally purchased gun he had left at the fountain to his address, Nash shot himself, Bouchard said. Macomb County medical examiner's spokesman Scott Turske said an autopsy showed Nash died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

When police broke into the trailer, after first dispatching a drone, they recovered 11 guns — a mix of pistols, rifles and shotguns — Bouchard said. He said investigators were working Monday to determine where the guns were purchased and whether they were purchased legally.

“We have no information on any contact (Nash) had with law enforcement,” Bouchard said. “No arrests, no criminal history. Someone told me the last time he had contact with law enforcement was in 2016 for a traffic violation. “

Investigators continued Monday to try to determine a motive for the shooting by reviewing Nash's social media accounts, while also examining his cellphone and other electronic devices, including a tablet, that were confiscated from his home. said the sheriff.

“We may not be able to find (a motive),” Bouchard said. “Sometimes, like the Oxford High School shooting, some devices revealed very explicit plans: 'Here's what I plan to do, here's why, and I'm looking forward to it.' This sort of thing comes up a lot when people do this.

“But we might not find anything like that here,” Bouchard said. “We're looking at (Nash's) devices to determine if there's anything connecting these dots. Obviously the first question people ask is: why? How did this happen? Why did this happen? And What set it in motion?”

Expert focuses on murder-suicides

Daniel Kennedy, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Detroit-Mercy and a forensic criminologist who often testifies in court as an expert on the motivation of criminals, said people who commit targeted mass shootings “plan usually die afterwards.

“This is a murder-suicide scenario, whether any of his victims die or not, since he clearly planned to kill people by shooting into the crowd. I don't think he was trying to scare,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said Saturday's incident with Nash at Splash Park was akin to Steven Paddock, who in 2017 killed 60 people and injured at least 413 others at a Las Vegas concert, or the gunman University of Michigan Anthony Dwayne McRae, who killed and injured three students last year. five others. Paddock and McRae committed suicide following their shootings.

“In these cases, the plan is to kill people and then die yourself,” Kennedy said. “There are different kinds of murder-suicides: there is remorseful murder-suicide in which one kills one's lover and then, realizing what he or she has done, commits suicide out of remorse. Then there is revenge suicide , where one takes revenge on a former lover who left him, or on society because he feels mistreated. Anger pushes him to take so many people with him when he dies because it is his. revenge against the society that pushed him to commit suicide and abandoned him.”

While about 5% of mass shootings are linked to serious mental illness, according to a 2022 Columbia University study, about 25% of mass shootings involve people with non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses, such than depression. The flood of social and emotional issues brought on by the COVID pandemic continues to overwhelm police, with officers called upon to run mental health-related errands more than ever, many of which turn violent.

The Oakland County Sheriff's Office is among many law enforcement agencies struggling to handle a record number of mental health runs. Oakland County Sheriff's deputies launched a program in 2021 in which social workers are delegated to help de-escalate some encounters with citizens suffering from mental illnesses.

Bouchard told the News his office has never dealt with so many people suffering from mental crises. He said that when he was elected sheriff in 1999, about 13 percent of inmates at the Oakland County Jail were taking psychotropic medications.

“The last time we took a sample, out of a population of around 1,400 people, 70% were taking psychotropic medications,” explained Bouchard.

“Almost daily” calls to mental health police

Four years ago, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig said his department was facing a record number of mental health-related races. Calls for service related to mental illness in Detroit increased 10%, from 7,209 in 2020 to 7,935 in 2021, according to police statistics.

That record has since more than doubled, Detroit Police Chief James White said last month at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

“(We did) 15,000 runs last year regarding mental health, and we're on pace to break that record again this year,” White told The News. “…Sometimes the person is violent. …Sometimes they want to hurt themselves.”

White said his department “views this as a significant crisis. In reality, none of us saw this coming. I mean, I joined the police to fight crime and ultimately, early in my career, I wanted to become a traffic cop and see what we're all about. But this year, Detroit police officers “are the primary providers of services for the mentally ill in our community,” he said.

At Monday's news conference, Bouchard said his deputies respond to mental health calls “almost daily.”

“We respond to many calls a week where someone has gone into the woods or disappeared with suicidal intentions,” Bouchard said. “We literally, while searching for people in mental health crisis, found an individual who was putting a rope around his neck to hang himself from a tree, and they interrupted that.”

Kennedy said people often confuse serious mental illnesses with personality disorders, even though both conditions can lead to violence.

“SMI, or serious mental illness, usually involves schizophrenia, bipolar illness or depression,” he said. “But usually in these conversations when people talk about mental illness, they're talking about someone who has a personality disorder. You can go out and kill people if you have a paranoid personality disorder, but “It's not the same as a paranoid schizophrenic. One may not be as serious as the other, but both can lead to major problems in your life, including violence.”

McRae, the Michigan State University shooter, had a history of mental problems before killing himself, while Oakland County prosecutors said Ethan Crumbley's parents were grossly negligent in failing to address their son's mental health needs, although Crumbley was found competent to stand trial.

Bouchard said he has been “begging” for years for more resources to deal with the flood of mental health races.

“There needs to be more emphasis on mental health for the community, more mental health resources and a broader continuum of care, both inpatient and outpatient settings,” Bouchard said. “Anyone in Washington or Lansing who asks what they can do to help, that's what they can do. We could use peer to peer resources and programs, mental health resources for community.”

[email protected]

(313) 222-2134

@GeorgeHunter_DN

Staff writer Melissa Nann Burke contributed.

Expert focuses on murder-suicides

“Almost daily” calls to mental health police

Lina Portman

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