Police seek tips after four women shot at large gathering in Flint. —WSMH, June 29, 2026
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Ron Riekki has covered every mass shooting in Michigan since July 2025 for The New Verse News. The Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network offers a 24-hour helpline at 1-800-241-4949. And those in a mental health crisis can call 988 instead of 911. |
“no relief in sight,
nothing to look forward to,
no way to get ahead—”
—John Sinclair,
“flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!”
—William Shakespeare,
Father’s Ghost, Hamlet
“How did you cope?”
—Eduardo C. Corral,
4 minutes from the scene of the shooting, I pass
the TRAUMA & EMERGENCY CENTER.
2 minutes from the scene of the shooting, I pass
a funeral home and a liquor store. It’s more
of the same, the same repetition in each city I go to.
This is my last week of covering mass shootings…
My hometown, growing up, never had a shooting.
And there were guns. Plenty of guns, but never
a shooting. This month, I stumble upon an article
of a shooting in the U.P. that led to the suspect
fleeing and crashing into gas station diesel pumps
in Negaunee. Yes, Negaunee. When I was little,
the most excitement in my hometown was seeing
a bald eagle. Now, it’s a gas station explosion
scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds, except
no birds. Just idiots. It’s like this everywhere now…
An online list of “Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities
In America Ranked By FBI Data” lists three MI
cities in the top ten worst for the country—Saginaw,
Detroit, and Flint. I’m in Flint. Another list lists
the “15 Most Dangerous Cities for Women in
the U.S. (2025).” Number one on the list is
Detroit. What happened to Michigan? I’m in
Flint. At the site of a mass shooting that happened
two days ago. I purposely come at night, wanting
to be there at the time of the shooting—11:27 p.m.
I arrive expecting graveyard quiet. Instead, to my
shock, there’s a party going on. Outside. Bonfire-ish
circle. Mostly all women. I walk up. Four boys
meet me. I open with “I’m not police; I’m not
police. I’m a journalist.” “Oh, hell no!” one of
the boys yells, walks away. I assure them I’m
not a cop. The boys scatter. A girl approaches.
She’s tipsy. Wears skin-tight white-white shorts.
She asks why I’m here. I tell her. She asks, no,
why am I here at this time of night? “Because
that’s when the shootings happened.” She insists,
asking why I’m here. I tell her I’m interested
to know how we lessen violence in black neighbor-
hoods. She says, yes, “We live in the hood.”
Except it doesn’t remind me of ‘hood,’ of
stereotypes of ‘hood.’ It’s pure middle-class.
Going to these mass shootings, I’ve come to
expect a remote rural feel of mid-urban centers’
apocalypses of concrete, barrenness and barbed
wire, but these homes are nice, much much nicer
than so many of the ‘hoods’ I’ve been to.
I’d live here. Easily. But I don’t know it here.
It’s my first time here. There was a block party
two days ago with four women shot, one who’s in
serious condition. And, again, two nights later, now
another party, a group of women, sitting, talking,
celebrating a birthday. I ask how we lessen violence.
The one woman who’ll talk to me says, “They want
you to leave.” She repeats this. I agree to leave…
Nearby, a liquor store has every parking spot filled
even though midnight’s nearing. I talk to a man
who wants to be called Black Man In Flint.
His friend is Mack. Mack won’t speak to me,
but speaks to Black Man In Flint who tells me
what Mack says, which isn’t much, as he’s very
silent, smoking, leaning back in his car, door open.
I ask Black Man In Flint if I can interview him.
He’s says, “I gotta work.” I ask if he’s affected by
the shootings. Black Man In Flint smokes, stands,
says, “It’s just life.” I ask him why there’s so many
shootings in the state. He says, “Life just be life-ing.”
Mack’s thick, a Notorious B.I.G. body, white T.
Black Man In Flint is thin-skinny, looks like he
just emerged from The Pharcyde’s “Drop” video.
I ask what we can do. He says, “Live.” I ask, yes,
but how do we change things, how do we improve
things. “You really can’t,” he says, looks at me.
He’d been looking away, eye contact emphasizing
the point, that we really can’t. “You have to reform
everyone,” he says, “Make everybody think ‘No more
violence, no more violence, no more violence,’” but
adds, “You can’t do that.” He works as a “producer.”
I ask, “For television?” Or is it “For hip-hop?”
He says, no, “GM, General Motors.” I ask if Flint
is dangerous. Black Man In Flint says, “Anywhere
you go can be dangerous.” I ask if he has a gun.
He shakes his head no, but says, “It’s a right.”
I ask if the problem is racism. He says, “Hell no.”
I hear “Hell yeah” and ask if that’s what he said.
He repeats, “Hell no.” I’m surprised by this.
I ask if it’s poverty that’s the root of the problem.
“No,” he says. I ask if the issue is guns, that
the problem is that it’s too easy to get guns.
He says he doesn’t have an issue with guns.
I ask if he knows anyone who’s been affected
by gun violence. “Yeah.” I repeat, saying
that wouldn’t it be safer without all the guns?
“If we didn’t have guns, people’d be getting
stabbed,” Black Man In Flint says. As far as
mass stabbing incidents, I think the largest one
ever in the U.S. was 8 people stabbed. Compare
that to the 927 people shot in the 2017 Las Vegas
mass shooting. That’s 919 more people. Comparing
knives to guns is like comparing water balloons
to hand grenades. I don’t say this. I thank him.
He shakes my hand, sincerely. Tells me to be safe.
I ask a final question. I want to know: what is
the root cause of the problem? “Just people,”
Black Man In Flint says… I drive to a gas station
nearby. I’m hoping to interview a woman.
I’m concerned that it’s four women who were
shot. In the last year, 64 people have been shot
in Flint, but it was 4 women shot here, a minute-
drive away. I walk up to Nia, a woman dressed
for the extreme heat warning, meaning minimally.
She looks like Mya, of “Ghetto Supastar” and
“Lady Marmalade” fame, except even prettier.
In the shadows, in his car, is John, who’d be
difficult to describe as he stayed in the darkness,
but from glimpses I’d say a cross between Big
Boi and André 3000, if Outkast combined into
one person. Both are pleasant, extremely pleasant.
In fact, when I first got the idea to go to every
mass shooting in Michigan for a year, I wondered
about going into F-graded crime areas, areas
marked on gang maps, but, consistently, always,
there’s incredible courtesy, even when they tell
me to leave. I went to a mass shooting in Chicago
and found it much more aggressive, much more of
a ‘we-don’t-want-you-here.’ Maybe it’s just my
Michigan accent, Michigan demeanor, Michigan
socks, black. We talk. Chat. Laid back. Like I’m
welcome, because I am. “Everybody got guns,”
John says. “I still really don’t think it can be
changed,” Nia says. She stands by her car,
dressed all in beige. Star tattoos on her leg
that remind me of Sault Ste. Marie indigenous
author Bamewawagezhikaquay whose name
translates as The Sound the Stars Make Rushing
Through the Sky. Above us, June Strawberry Moon.
John says it’s the “13-and-up” kids causing all
the havoc, that it’s not guys his age, in his 30s,
doing gun violence. They talk about needing
more programs for kids. And “more police.”
John repeats, “More police.” I tell him I wasn’t
expecting to hear that, but I’ve heard that in
other communities I’ve gone to. I ask what
happened to ‘Defund the Police.’ He says,
maybe it’s not more police, saying, “Police need
to start doing their job.” He tells me of seeing
a group of guys with AR-15s and the police
driving by them, not doing anything. John
adds, “It’s dangerous” to live here. A guy
walks out of the gas station wearing a ski
mask. “Like him,” John says, asks who’d
wear a ski mask when it’s in the 80s outside.
I ask if they have guns. Both say yes. John
says his is at home. Nia has hers. They have
CPLs. “I keep it locked away,” says Nia.
John says, “I got shot right there.” He points
at a nearby store. I ask what happened, where
he was shot. He points to his head. I say,
“You got shot in the head?” He shows me
the scar, but it’s too dark where he sits.
He tells me about the guy putting a gun
to his head. “To rob you?” “Yeah.”
John asks me what I think he was trying
to rob him for. I don’t know. He says,
“My gun.” He was being robbed for his gun.
I think about this. How safe is it to own
a gun? It seems like it just welcomes Hell.
I tell them about seeing footage of shootings
where I’ve seen multiple people get shot in one
second. How can you do anything if four people
are all shot in a second? John says that you just
hope it doesn’t kill you, then you can grab your
gun and fire back. Nia tells me, “My sister got
took from gun violence.” I ask what happened.
She was shot by another girl. “A girl?” I say.
“Yes,” she says, saying that it can be anybody
who kills someone nowadays. I ask her if
the violence is geared towards women, saying
that it was four women who just got shot in
the mass shooting. “It was a mass shooting?”
I tell her four people shot counts as a mass
shooting according to the FBI. “The FBI
was here?” No, I tell her, reexplaining.
Her sister was 22. I mention how she can
talk about her sister being murdered and
yet have so much control of her emotions.
“It was years ago,” she says, then adds that,
in reality, she does get overcome with emotions
sometimes. She then tells me that a friend of
hers was at the mass shooting, that her car
was hit by bullets. “I heard the gunshots,”
says John, telling me he didn’t go to the block
party, because he avoids block parties, saying
“too many shootings” at them. He tells me of
all the parking spots on the street being filled
because so many people were there. Nia says
she doesn’t think it’s violence directed against
women, but that it’s violence directed against
everyone. (I’m unsure of this, go home, and
look up all the articles on Flint shootings in
the last year: 42 incidents. 23 women shot
in Flint and 43 men shot in Flint in the last
year. I end up stumbling across a June 23
Detroit shooting where a 20-year-old named
Brianna Taylor was shot. I think of the famous
Breonna Taylor, born in Grand Rapids, shot
and killed in 2020 during a no-knock search
warrant. Breonna was an E.R. tech, a first
responder. Two months after the killing of
Breonna Taylor, George Floyd was murdered.
I’d been an EMT forever. I remember seeing
the footage of George Floyd for the first time
on TV, tuning in mid-report, not knowing
what the news story was about, watching
the TV and speaking to it, saying, “Turn him
over, turn him over,” actually talking to
the TV. In EMS training, they taught us
that if a person ever says, “I can’t breathe,”
to believe them. We were also taught that
you can’t keep someone prone if they can’t
breathe. “Turn him over,” I kept saying
to the screen.) John goes to meet some
friends. I stand talking with Nia. She looks
like the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Before I know what I’m doing I say, “Are you
single?” “Yes,” she says. “Can I give you my
number?” She takes it. I get to my car, drive
home. Full full moon. I see that she called me.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
