19300 block of Rensellor Street, Livonia, MI,
June 10, 2026
by Ron Riekki
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-hourhelpline at 1-800241-4949.
And those in a mental health crisis can call 988 intead if 911.
“With my ear to the door
of my cell. And my want
like a comb in my hair.”
—Jane Huffman,
“I’m sure as heat,
as surety.
The bleed”
—Jane Huffman,
“Police say there is no ongoing threat to the public.”
Are you kidding me? Michigan has had more than
100 mass shootings since 2020. You don’t think it’s
an ongoing threat?! I can’t imagine a more ongoing
threat to the public. It’s another family annihilation.
Yes, another family annihilation. Another. Another
family. Another family annihilated. Anti-Christed,
hated, non-mothered, to not, knotted, no other Tues-
days, shooter unsteady. When you search “Livonia”
on the Poetry Foundation website, it says “0 results.”
When you search “Livonia” on the Gun Violence
Archive website, you get 31 results since 2014—
31 shootings here since 2014. Only one of them a mass
shooting. I’m at the mass shooting. The house, small.
The houses nearby, small. A small man sits on a small
porch, a tiny porch, broken wooden rails, his skin also
broken so that I ask what’s wrong, bandages on both
arms, the look like previous bleeding, bruises, purpura,
petechiae. The feel of peripeteia, bathos, pathos, cath-
arsis, anagnorisis, a chorus of country music cranked
in some a--holes truck parked mid-street, blocking traffic,
the guy getting out, going to the memorial in front of
the house, standing there, staring at it, has enough, goes
back to his truck and then squeals the tires loooong with
the truck in park, attention-seeking, angry, this hyper-mask,
this loudness, this performativity, and then he floors it,
truck swerving, almost hitting cars on the side of the road,
and he’s gone. I talk to Doug, a neighbor two doors down
from the mass shooting. So many of these guys who live
near the mass shootings I go to look like pirates—sea-salt
skin, Blackbeard-types with white beards, beer-belly skinny.
Doug tells me his last name and, swear to God, he actually
has the same last name as a famous pirate, a 1600s buccaneer.
He smokes, looking like a survivor, tells me that on Tuesday,
the day of the mass murders, he was in the backyard with
the family that was killed, helping them set up a pool. I say,
“A pool. And then it becomes a pool of blood.” Doug says
in a voice that combines hip-hop’s Drake and outlaw pirate
Sir Francis Drake, “I should kick you in the shins.” He’s not
joking. He tells me of seeing the corpse of the mother killed
by the shooter, tells me the shooting happened at 5 p.m.-some-
thing, but the bodies weren’t taken out until 11:30 p.m.-ish.
Why would they leave the bodies there for that long?
Fingerprints, detectives, a cop telling him, “This is a crime
scene,” Doug staying on his property. And the cop cars.
Cop car after cop car. No place to park. He points to a car
on the street, says, “That’s Sterling’s car.” 58-year-old.
The father. Shot and killed by his son who shot his mother,
his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend. Doug tells me that
they’re slowly towing their cars away. I never thought of
the cars. How the owners are all dead. Something I’d never
even think of. He tells me how long it took them to take
the bodies away, how long it’s taking them to tow the cars.
Doug wears an ALICE’S RESTAURANT WOODSIDE
CALIFORNIA T-shirt, black-and-white. It’s a black-and-
white neighborhood. The shooter, white. Family, white.
All dead. The killer looking dead in news video footage of
him in front of the judge who denied him bail. A face that,
honestly, the first time I saw it, I thought of severe substance
abuse disorder. A face that made me think of abuse, and of
disorder. Doug pulls his shirt out like pro basketball players
do after scoring a critical basket, says, “Guthrie,” proud,
a song about cops, about crime, the longest song I’ve ever
heard. Doug tells me of his wife calling him, telling him
she heard gunshots. Doug telling her to hide in the bath-
tub if it continues. The song has the lyrics of kill kill kill
kill. Such strange lyrics. Such a strange life. Telling your
wife to hide in a bathtub if the gunshots continue. Doug
tells me the mass shooter “didn’t talk much,” was “quiet,”
but “I’d joke with him every once in a while,” like yelling
at him to “buy me a Slurpee!” Doug tells me the mother
planted flowers. It’s the exact same talk as the last family
annihilation I went to, the neighbor in Grand Rapids telling
me about the woman’s love of gardening. These mass
shooters are killing women who love to garden. I can’t
imagine anything more peaceful, more grounded, paired
with such horror. This life makes no sense, because of all
the death. That pairing. Doug says, it “seemed like a normal
day,” the day of the mass murders. He tells me no bullets
came towards his home. The killer used a semiautomatic
rifle, shoots five to thirty rounds with up to five bullets per
second. You can kill five people in one second with a semi-
automatic rifle. Who would own that? Online, it says semi-
automatic rifles are for “hunting, sport shooting, self-defense,”
and, apparently, for mass shootings. They forget to mention it.
I’m going to be honest: Fuck the NRA. That’s my one
curse word I’ll allow. The three-letter curse word: NRA.
The nonrandomness of these shootings, how repetitive
they are, automatic, unraveling daily, nonrational, enraging,
the pain they cause unratable. Sunrays hit the house, punch
our skin. Doug tells me he’s on blood-thinners, the reason
for his contusions, his arms covered in red, blue, purple,
green, yellow discolorations. Semiautomatic rifles were
invented by a German, were used by the Nazis in WWII.
The killer’s last name is Pierce: to make a hole or opening
in. Perforate. Penetrate. The penitentiary awaits.
I remember when I worked in the prison system, an inmate
in there who was doing back-to-back-to-back life sentences—
he would have to die, get resurrected, die again, resurrect,
and then die again, and then he could get out on his fourth
life. I think of the 1.7 million men in prison in the U.S.
The prison system is hungry for angry men. Its stomach
aches for angry men. It’s “nearly impossible” for men
to get into therapy—the cost, the therapists who work
Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and don’t
realize that’s when people work, that they can’t go to
therapy if you schedule your hours for when they work,
the therapists who “refuse to see men,” the stigma, markets
of anger, the MMA marketing, the UFC marketing, WWE,
the road-rage retaliation that’s stuffed into men’s brains, how
boring it is, how polluted. Doug tells me the shooter killed
his brother in his bedroom, his brother’s girlfriend the same
bedroom, killed his parents in their backyard, Doug realizing
the mother was dead because she’d “been there for an hour
and a half,” lying there, motionless, when he saw her, the body
in the sun, the body “on the patio.” Doug tells me “Tuesday
night, I prayed and cried and cried and prayed,” that he “did
not sleep well.” He tells me it took “two days” for their “cat
to come out of the basement.” The shooter even shot one
of the dogs in the leg. Doug says, “I didn’t know he got
any guns in the house.” I ask Doug if he has a gun. “No,
my wife won’t let me.” I ask him if his wife won’t let him
because so many guns, I find, are used to kill the partner.
It seems there’s nothing safer than ensuring there are no
guns at all in a home. I talked to a therapist who told me
that gun ownership is a sign of mental health disorder,
another therapist who told me how often you find that
those with substance use disorders are gun owners, as if
they go hand-in-hand. If I was married to someone, I think
the first thing I’d do is throw out any guns in the home,
because I’d prefer not to be shot. But that’s just me.
I want to tell Doug that his wife is smart, brilliant.
I ask Doug what needs to happen to improve things. He says,
“The yahoo in the White House, he doesn’t do anything
about gun control,” adds, “I don’t even like saying his name.”
Doug tells me he’d own a gun though, if it wasn’t for his wife.
Why? “Protection.” He says the problem is “alpha males,
macho males,” says the answer is if we “cut the trigger finger
off” of these mass shooters, takes his free hand and acts like
he’s holding a saw, his finger sticking out, pretending he’s
invisibly sawing off his finger, adds, “background checks”
would help. I tell him the mass shooter had no criminal
background, no reported mental health issues. At least
that’s what the news reports. I see a neighbor pull up,
lives in the house right next to the mass shooting. I go
over. The guy reminds me of Ichabod Crane, how I
imagined him when I read the story. He’s nervous,
visibly, very. We talk. He’s guarded. A full family
was murdered feet from where we’re standing. Even
his dog in the window looks scared. I say this to him.
I asked if he talked to the shooter. Yes. I ask what
he was like. He starts to tell me, then backtracks.
He’s jittery. He tells me not to put that, tells me
to put he was “nice,” that the mass shooter was
always “nice.” He repeats the word “nice.” He
doesn’t want me to put what he was originally
going to say, except I don’t know what he was
going to originally say, just that now he wants me
to put that the killer was “nice,” and I have this
revelation—all these times I’ve seen the news
where neighbors, friends, family of the mass
murderer gets asked to describe the killer, they
always say something like that, that he was “nice”
and I realize now, for the first time, that it’s B.S.
He’s saying the killer was nice, because he’s nervous,
noticeably, almost exaggeratedly, a definite PTSD, eyes
darting, restless. He doesn’t want me putting anything
down that might make the killer pissed off, a killer who,
I remind him, will most likely be doing life in prison
with no parole. He tells me his name, but I tell him
I can use a nickname, but he says, no, I can use his
name, but I won’t, simply because of all sixteen mass
shootings I’ve gone to, I can tell he’s really honestly
fearing for his life from this guy who’ll probably be
incarcerated forever, but I understand. It’s right next
to his home, his dog in the window, anxious for him
to go inside, his dog having heard the gunshots. Can
dogs have PTSD? Hell yes. My parents owned a rescue
dog and that thing was more hypervigilant than an ex-
Marine. I walk over to the memorial in front of the house.
I notice the neighbor watching me. He mentioned that
he’s in therapy. I think, Good. I wish more men would
get into therapy. I wish more men weren’t seduced by
the small-penis pseudo-cure of gun ownership. I wish
more men were actually like Ichabod Crane and less
Headless Horseman—brainless, violent, ghoulish; I think
of the Hell that awaits the mass murderer, what happens
in prison, the sons in there, the poison of prison, the way
you pay and pay and pay and pay, an inmate one time
telling me that he taped books to his chest when he slept
at night, worried about being stabbed in his sleep, another
inmate telling me he didn’t go to the chapel because so
many men were raped in there, and I remember this row
of toilets, toilet after toilet after toilet that you’d see
through the glass, on the way with the walk to the chapel
and how all these men would be sitting, shitting, in full
sight, no privacy, and the chapel in back, a guard taking me,
and this intricate Jesus Christ depiction, incredible, detailed,
even expensive looking, carved, careful, Jesus with so much
blood on his wrists. So much. I kept staring at all the blood.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
