Police: Suspect in shooting Michigan suicide - Palm Beach Post

By TOM COYNE

The Associated Press

Last updated: 7: 11 a.m. Friday, July 8, 2011

Posted: 3 pm, Friday, July 8, 2011

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan - hours after the shooting stopped, ended by a car chase and a gunman wanted for having killed seven people took three hostages, authorities in Michigan always hoped that the suspect could abandon without another death.

Grand Rapids police attempted to speak of a restless Rodrick Shonte Dantzler giving until late Thursday. They said that his thoughts seemed to switch between the assignment and asking officers to shoot him.

"He was talking about coming out, giving himself," said the head of the Police Kevin Belk. "He decided at the last moment to fire the gun."

The ex-forçats of 34 years of Grand Rapids killed himself with a single blow on the head, putting an end to the standoff with its hostages safe and sound. But the authorities say Dantzler left behind a pair of bloody crime scenes - the result of an unexplained rampage in which he killed his daughter, a friend and five other people, including a second child which the police could not immediately identify.

"It is absurd to try to rationalize what were the intentions," said Belk. "You just cannot come up with a logical explanation, why a person takes the lives of seven people."

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

The archives show that Dantzler is out of State prison in 2005, after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said that dantzler had not been under the supervision of the State since then.

Police began by a 911 call early Thursday afternoon from someone saying that a man had admitted killing three people, said Belk. Police went to the home of Dantzler, but it was step here and officials he could not find.

It was not long before that the authorities received a call from a woman who said that his family had been shot. Just then a call on someone found four victims shot to another House.

Agents are soon three bodies in a House on Plainfield Avenue. An hour later, they discovered four others across the city in a style ranch on a cul-de-sac called the Brynell Court House.

Two of the dead were children.

Kyle Gietzen lives with his wife a few blocks from the House where the three bodies were found. He was nearby and five to six officers tried to break in the front door, while others went to the door from behind. He said that he did not know what happened later.

"I had no idea of the person had been shot," he said. "I just thought that it was a sting to drug or something." It's awful. »

Another neighbour, Sandra Powney, lives in front of one of the houses and stated that she saw Dantzler in the ranch house, where a couple has lived for more than 20 years with two adult daughters. Powney has said that she had been at home all day and had not realized that someone had been killed until the arrival of the police to the dead end in the afternoon.

"For some time we could not come outside," she said. "They do not know if there was someone still inside of the House".

Lisa Schenden lives with her husband and their children two blocks of the House where four people were killed. It said that the owners were a couple whose daughter had a daughter with the suspect. She has not heard the shooting, but she saw the suspect and his daughter to the home player earlier in the day.

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

While police were investigating seven homicide, Belk said police received a report of a "rage in the" shooting.

Dantzler had apparently shot a man through the rear window of the vehicle he was driving. Police spotted him and began a pursuit which included Dantzler crashing on a vehicle patrol in the city and Exchange fire with officers, during which female bystander was shot in the shoulder.

Danztler led a sport utility vehicle North of downtown and Interstate 96, across a grassy median and position on the wrong side of the road, then more than a dozen cars squad continued. Belk said it crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment in a wooded road, which is remained closed area hours later.

"I look in my rearview mirror and see this big SUV white coming up behind me," said Carrie Colacchio, who lives a little more of a mile away where Dantzler takes no later than its three hostages. "The only way out was to push the Accelerator".

Colacchio said that it could not step turn off the road or slow or go in any other way, and it reached about 85 mph.

"I almost me am struck," she said. "I had to ride on the sidewalk."

Court strikes Michigan banning affirmative action in college admissions - Los Angeles Times

A Committee of three judges of a Court of Appeal Federal Friday overturned ban in Michigan on the consideration of race and gender in college admissions. Above, Michigan State University graduates in 2006. (Associated Press)Ban on considering the race and sex admissions at the University of Michigan was struck down Friday by a Federal Court of appeal, which held that minorities in loads of law approved by the voter and is unconstitutional.

2-1 Decision reverses the proposal 2, a law passed in 2006 which prohibits public universities of the State to provide "preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, colour, ethnic or national origin.".

The measure, which passed with 58% of the vote, forced the University of Michigan and other schools in the State to change their policy on admissions. The Panel of three judges of the 6th U.S. Court of Appeal held that the Act violates the fourteenth amendment equal protection clause.

The Court has challenged the ban was adopted. Because the Act amended the State Constitution, only another ? vote might change. This has created an obstacle for minorities opposed to the Act to overcome, ruled judges r. Guy Cole Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey.

"Proposal 2 rearranges the political process in Michigan to place special charges on minority interests," they said.

The only dissenting judge, Julia Smith Gibbons, said that the system of the University of Michigan was not structured in the process of "political" and that the members of the faculty have been isolated from political influence.

"Michigan voters have therefore not restructured the political process in their State by amending the constitution of the State;" they have simply used it, "Gibbons has written in his partial dissent."

Mark Fancher, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of a coalition that challenged the law, said that the decision would provide equality of opportunity in the admission process.

"It reopens the opportunity for minorities not only be heard by the directors of the University, but have an expectation that if they can convince administrators that there is validity by examining their racial identity, that the University can really act,"he says. ".

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he planned to appeal the decision asking a new hearing to the 6th Circuit Court of appeals. The Act will remain in place pending a final decision.

"Act" embodies the fundamental premise of what America is all about: equal opportunities Act, "Schuette said in a statement.".Entry of our great universities must be based on merit, and I will continue the fight for equality, fairness and rule of law. »

Other States, including California, Arizona, Washington and Nebraska, have similar bans, but will not be affected by the decision of Michigan. Only the States in the Sixth Circuit, which includes the Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, would be affected.

However, George Washington, an attorney focused on the Strait with the firm Scheff, Washington and pilot, who filed the continuation of Michigan, said that their focus now moves to California. The firm has appealed the 9th Circuit Court of appeals to overturn Proposition 209 State.

The measure was adopted by voters in California in 1996. "prop." 209 is just as unconstitutional as proposal 2, "he says. "It is a carbon copy."

The University of California spokesman Ricardo Vazquez said legal staff of top-Canada has refused to comment on Friday on the case of Michigan because they need more time to review the decision and if it had no relevance to the prohibition of affirmative action state college admissions in California.

Christine Helwick, General Counsel of the Cal State University system, said Friday that it and other California education officials will monitor the appeals of the Michigan case. The case could finally be a relevant in California if the Supreme Court of the United States hearing an appeal, said.

Stephen.Ceasar@LAtimes.com

Staff writer Larry Gordon contributed to this report.