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."
