US authorities said that nine people, including two children, were injured when a gunman opened fire in a water park near Detroit, Michigan, on Saturday evening, before shooting himself after police surrounded him.
The authorities described the incident as a random shooting and said that they surrounded the suspect in a nearby house, where he committed suicide by shooting himself.
The local police chief showed a picture of a semi-automatic rifle from inside the house where the suspect, whose name was not mentioned, was being pursued. Authorities found a handgun at the scene of the shooting, officials said. Authorities described the suspect as a 42-year-old man, but the motive behind the shooting is not yet clear.
An eight-year-old child is in critical condition in the hospital after being shot in the head. His four-year-old brother was also injured, but his condition is stable.
Oakland County Police Chief Michael Bouchard told reporters that their mother was also in critical condition after being shot in the abdomen and leg.
Bouchard added that the health condition of the remaining six infected people, who are 30 years old or older, is stable.
Bouchard said in a press conference that the suspect got out of a car in front of the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills, Michigan, at about 5 p.m. local time (2100 GMT), fired about 30 rounds from a semi-automatic Glock weapon, and reloaded it several times.
Rochester Hills is located about 50 kilometers north of Detroit, and the neighboring town of Oxford, also in Oakland County, was the scene of a mass shooting at a school in 2021, where student Ethan Crumbley – who was 15 years old at the time – killed four students and wounded. Six others and a teacher at Oxford High School.
“It’s definitely a shock for us here in Oakland County… We’ve been through a lot of tragedies, you know,” Bouchard said. “We have not yet fully understood what happened in Oxford.”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said on X: “I am heartbroken to learn of the shooting in Rochester Hills.”