Michigan Massacre: 13-Year-old Girl Calls 9-1-1 After Being Shot Multiple Times

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Monday, August seventeenth, and what in the world is going on in Michigan For a thirteen year old girl is the sole survivor of a killing spree that has left at least six people dead. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. I should mention the killer is among the dead in that number, at least the suspect in this case. Also among the dead is another teenage boy. And I say, what the hell is going on Robes, because we have seen a stretch of these mass killings. It seems familial in a lot of instances. And another one was very recently in Michigan, about two hours away from this one.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: Yes, this is not a story we want to keep waking up to, and yet we seem to be doing so. Yes, we're talking about mass shootings, mass killings where entire families are taken out. And yes, it has happened again in Michigan twice in a matter of weeks. Correct, this is just untenable. It's to the point where you even said, before we got word of this, it feels like this is becoming our new school shootings that we're now seeing. Story after story after story of a killer taking out an entire family.

00:01:22
Speaker 1: It's crazy how rare this should be. And we are talking in the past three four months, we have seen at least once a month, and in some cases a couple within a matter of weeks. These two happened within about a two hour drive from each other. Robes the other one we're talking about with a guy killed his six kids and then killed his wife. And this one now now they're still working out the details of what his relation to the dead is, but they know for sure that some members of the same family were targeted in one household. And so here we are waking up. You said it this, You actually said it. When you saw the headline, say wait, we got another one. Wait wait, wait, this happened possible and you couldn't believe you were looking at it closely, you pause and read further to make sure it was what we were saying in it appears to be.

00:02:15
Speaker 2: And look, this is horrific, this is tragic. But there is this little miracle among this awful story, or a part of this awful story, and that this thirteen year old girl is actually being hailed a hero. She saved her own life, and she certainly led police to the perpetrator, and that is something to be applauded. And very rarely do we have a glimmer of hope or a survivor or someone who can live to tell the story and maybe, I don't know, do something to try and shed some light on the whys and the hows and ultimately hopefully which could lead to prevention. This is just not something that can continue to happen, and we don't know. Could some of the headlines of these other stories be prompting or be the catalyst for these new shootings we're hearing about. Do people get ideas, do people think this is how I'm going to go out, this is how I'm going to leave my mark? I don't know, but it just seems so bizarre and beyond coincidental that this could just keep happening at the rate it's been happening this summer and even this year.

00:03:22
Speaker 1: There's going to be a point we're going to have to have more different conversations about this. Because Rogue one thing about and it did happen. They were worried about copycats, and we have seen that for sure in some school shootings, where some school shooters would write about how they did idolize previous school shooters, so we know that happens. The difference there sometimes with kids, they have a little more difficulty getting access to a gun, even though plenty get their hands on it. Roads if you're talking about adults, and all these things we've been seeing are adult males, there's so many weapons, so many guns readily available all over the place. To think someone it's easy for an adult male to pick up and find a gun around the house robes. So this is terrifying in that respect. This takes no planning, This takes nothing but a rage moment and the access that it seems so many I have ropes this one. And among the dead is now a sixteen year old boy. And anytime I hear that someone turned a gun or a knife on their own child or anybody that is a child, it baffles the mind.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: I mean, that's beyond comprehension for most people. It truly is. And you mentioned this was about two hours from where we saw that family massacre at the hands of the father. This one, if you're familiar with Michigan at all, the Lake Township in Missauke County, the north central part of the state. This happened on Friday, and it all began with a nine to one to one call just before noon to police, and it came from a very unlikely caller, the thirteen year old girl who was shot four times, the fact that she was able to call nine one one. This is a thirteen year old and we have her name because her grandfather has given a few interviews and talked about the Police have not officially identified her, but the grandfather has been speaking and talking to local press about his granddaughter and talking about her being a hero. But he lost his daughter, his grandson, his daughter's boyfriend. And that's at least who was in that initial home who was killed. But yes, three were found dead, a forty five year old man, a forty year old woman, and that sixteen year old boy. The grandfather said his grandson just turned sixteen last week, that they had just been over at the house celebrating his birthday, talked about his excitement about being a junior in high school, about wanting to go to college. Just you start thinking about all the plans that were being made this young kid now debt.

00:05:58
Speaker 1: And there is nothing at least police are suggesting right now and in the interviews the family, saying as well, they don't know what would have triggered anything like this and no motive, but for whatever reason, police believe this man walk into his home and decided to shoot everybody in it. And he did shoot everybody, and he just didn't kill everybody in the house, like you said, Ropes. The thirteen year old young lady survive, So this sets off. Obviously, she was able to communicate to police who this guy was. Robes, you can imagine the manhunt that then was triggered in that area. And again, this is on Friday, So all this was happening is that right before noon on Friday. So this started a massive manhunt for this guy.

00:06:40
Speaker 2: As you can only imagine, and eventually and she was able to identify him and police were aware of him. I believe that's how it was written. But he was identified as thirty nine year old Chad Hickman. And look, he had a violent past. He certainly had run ins with the law before. He even pleaded guilty to child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a miner at one point. But yeah, charged with assault, sexual misconduct, domestic violence. This guy was a bad dude. At least he was known. And that's when I say, when police say he was known to them, when she identified him, they knew who they were looking for, and it led them to a second home. And this is where we don't know the relation to Chad Hickman or to this other family that was murdered. But they found a fifty three year old man dead inside that home that they've linked to Hickman. And then ultimately they found him dead in the woods, correct, with a twenty nine year old woman who was another shooting victim of his next to him.

00:07:43
Speaker 1: They haven't what is the connection, what is the relation? What is the purpose? What is the point of any of this? And then he took his own life, all right? You always say why didn't you start there?

00:07:53
Speaker 2: Right?

00:07:54
Speaker 1: He took out all these folks, killed five, meant to kill six, and she survived. Why? And who is this twenty nine year old woman? Authorities have only given the ages officially, Like you said, the granddad is talking, but they've only given the ages. Rose. This is just another what is happening? What has set this off?

00:08:15
Speaker 2: Now?

00:08:15
Speaker 1: There's plenty in his background. In his official background wrote his criminal background that suggests he had a yes, not suggests he.

00:08:23
Speaker 2: Had he had a violent history, right, he has it.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: And it's in there. But what has set this off? Who knows, but robes you can probably guess there was an event that set this off. We've learned this in so many of these cases, especially when they take out whole families, taking out kids, and then killed themselves. There's some event that has shaken these men who do this. Maybe this will be different, but we'll see.

00:08:49
Speaker 2: Yes, because it does seem it doesn't not just even he targeted these folks. He targeted one by one, this family in this one home, a man in another home, and a woman he had lain next to him, and so he went after each of these people who clearly didn't see it coming, who were not anticipating this or expecting this. And this is just horrific. The only insight. Again, the grandfather has been talking. He is claiming that Hickman was childhood friends with his daughter who is among the dead. So there is a connection, a friendship. We don't know if it goes beyond that. And again, her boyfriend, according to the grandfather, was the man in the home who was killed, so she was already in another relationship. She had two kids from a previous relationship, and he goes in a childhood friend and kills everybody in the house, or at least tries to because the thirteen year old survives. But that is just a puzzling situation. Why he chose to do this, what event triggered it, And obviously this is what police and investigators are going to be trying to piece together to try and understand what happened. And maybe that thirteen year old who has survived, is going to be able to provide the most insight of it all, because rarely do you have a survivor who can talk about what happened and maybe why it happened.

00:10:06
Speaker 1: You say, rarely we have a survivor. In recent shootings like this, we have not had a survivor at all. Stay here, folks, will give you a reminder of this recent trend that we have seen in men, and usually in previous cases it's actually the father, the head of that household, taking out his entire family. This is happening. This is happening more often.

00:10:34
Speaker 2: Stay here, Welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ. This has just been on an unnerving string of mass shootings that have taken place and primarily in the Midwest. Actually, when we take a look at what's been happening around the country, but we don't even have to go back very far to talk about recent episodes similar to this, where the father in often cases is the perpetrator. But yes, we've seen entire families taken out by a man, either with a gun or another weapon, with the intent to kill an entire family, you.

00:11:19
Speaker 1: Know, the ones you're talking about. This was the father and all these previous ones that we're looking at. Wow, Robes and the well, we had one just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, Well, I say a couple weeks ago. It was a it was last ago, a week ago. This one stunned us, Robes because it seemed like we had just come off a different one. But when you hear about the ages this guy killed his wife and four kids, Robert Williams Sr. Just the ages of the kids, it's.

00:11:48
Speaker 2: Jarring three to nine, correct.

00:11:50
Speaker 1: Three five, seven nine, all his kids and the seven year old was his son, his namesake, Robert Williams Junior. So we don't have an understanding of that before that, Robes is the one I can never get the guy's last name right. But in Michigan.

00:12:07
Speaker 2: Karolkowitz Christopher Karolkowitz in Michigan July. Yeah, this is the one that was a stunner because literally firefighters go in at reports of smoke and find eight dead bodies, all shot to death. None of them died from smoke inhalation. He apparently killed all six of his kids, all six of his kids, then his wife, and then set the home on fire and then killed himself. It was shocking and still look, there are we can get into some of the whys. He had just lost his job. There were reports that he was having an affair. But yes, he decided not just to end his own life, but to take his entire family with him, and those kids.

00:12:49
Speaker 1: Were ages five to fifteen. We had then before that in June, Ryan McFarland. This was an Iowa. He killed six people. Some of these were his family members, including let's say one, two, three, three of his own kids.

00:13:02
Speaker 2: There's also a junior in there, a thirteen year old Ryan McFarlane.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: Junior wife is well, and then two other family members. Those kids were between the ages of thirteen and twenty. But rose, I think the one in April out of Shreveport, you know some of the details make this sound like really rogue. We have seen this in a horror movie before, where a parent feel was like almost possessed to hear someone is chasing down children to kill them.

00:13:28
Speaker 2: Yes, except for it was the father of these children who was literally chasing down his own flesh and blood to kill them. He killed eight kids, seven of them his own. One of his daughters was able to escape, and again there was one where someone was able to live through it, or at least escape and be able to tell authorities what happened, what she went through. But the whyse in all of these we've done a little bit of research into it, and oftentimes there is an event, something that is catastrophic, something that elicits incredible shame, and so the reaction by these men is to end everyone's lives around them, not just their own, because what they're trying to in a way, it's like a final act of protecting them or protecting them from what shame he's about to bring on them, or the life that was about to change for them because of his actions. But obviously none of it's justifiable, and frankly, it isn't really understandable to most of us.

00:14:28
Speaker 1: It's not, but there are pieces there that were I don't know if you can call them warning signs, but there are things that do link these cases where if they do have similarities, are they warning signs? Should we What can you do about something like this? And yes, Robes, I would yes, we need to talk to a psychologist about it, maybe a criminologist whatever. But can it not be having an impact to see these things happening more and more and having more and more headlines? Is this not going to be giving that idea to other people, to other men at this point, Robes, this is we looked at all these studies. This is almost exclusively a man thing to do. Robes, There's no way we should be hearing about one story a year that a guy kills his seven kids.

00:15:15
Speaker 2: We're hearing them now. It feels like once a week at least it has been in the last few weeks, and certainly once a month in the last several months. And so this is I feel like this is a point in which we're at a national crisis. I mean, we've we've been at a national crisis on guns and gun violence for quite some time, and nothing has seemed to change that much about that situation. So is this just the next evolution from school shootings. It's disturbing, its frightening, and we have to talk.

00:15:42
Speaker 1: About it killing their own kids though, I just don't. They didn't go into that work well, he didn't go into his workplace after he lost the job and try to kill anybody. No, right, I don't. The killing of the kid's part is just something don't aware it's wrong to kill anybody, that's But I guess somebody could see the point I'm making here to hear a father shooting in the case of what's the one we just had with a dad in the daycare? Where was that baby?

00:16:06
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was in Minnesota. That one was in Minnesota, just in Minneapolis suburb. But we're talking about the Midwest. We're talking about the heartland of America in most of these cases, and Rose that was that one?

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Even more recent? Wasn't that in recent days as well?

00:16:21
Speaker 2: Babe? That was on that was last week and it was a screwdriver. I believe it was Wednesday.

00:16:26
Speaker 1: So that part robes He killed his seven year old daughter with a screwdriver. What causes anyone to go that kind of crazy?

00:16:37
Speaker 2: He killed his wife, his daughter and his mother and then shot himself and that way. Yeah, we forgot to mention that, babe. That was Wednesday. So we just named four in the last two months, three months.

00:16:54
Speaker 1: I don't I don't get it. We need to pay attention to familicide. Maybe we'll start hearing that word more and more. But familis is what it's called. Yes, this idea of men taking out their entire families, and yes, like you said, robes, what are they have in common? Usually there's some event that triggers this lost a job, about to be found out in some way, that veneer in some way, that public image is going to be shattered and they can't take it. These are men who can't deal with humiliation, they say. These are men who are who lack the ability to be vulnerable robes and to see anything and to be controlling. That's the one they said. They have all this in common, robes. There are a bunch of women listening, go, I've dated somebody that was controlling. You never cross your mind the dude's going to take out the whole family.

00:17:38
Speaker 2: No, But with these headlines now, maybe it needs to be a concern and we need to understand what the difference is between someone who's controlling and someone who's homicidal.

00:17:47
Speaker 1: We don't know right how fine is that line, Robes, how fine is that line? But folks wanted to make sure. But there's one on your radar as well. It's something to keep an eye on. We certainly are, but we appreciate you as always spending a little time with us. My dear me robot, I'm t J. Holmes. We'll talk to h