Michigan Shooting Spree Leaves Six Dead; 13-Year-Old Survivor Called 911 After Being Shot Four Times
A 13-year-old girl in Missaukee County, Michigan, survived being shot four times and called 911 to report the attack herself, during a shooting spree on Friday, August 14, 2026, that left six people dead, including the suspected gunman. The Guardian
The rampage unfolded across three crime scenes near Lachance and Kelly Roads in northern Michigan, according to UpNorthLive. Michigan State Police spokesperson Lt Ashley Miller confirmed that the girl placed the 911 call from one of those three locations. She was found at the first scene alongside the bodies of a 16-year-old boy, a 45-year-old man, and a 40-year-old woman. All had suffered gunshot wounds.
At a second home, police discovered a 53-year-old victim, also deceased. The third scene was a wooded area, where a 29-year-old woman and the suspected shooter, 39-year-old Chad Hickman, were found dead next to each other after police launched a manhunt. All victims in the spree died of gunshot wounds.
Investigators could not immediately determine whether Hickman died by suicide. An autopsy — the medical examination of a body to establish cause of death — was pending at the time of the most recent reporting.
Hickman's five slain victims were described by police as a teenage boy and four adults. A relative, David Everitt, identified two of them as his daughter, 40-year-old Amanda Everitt, and his grandson, 16-year-old Eric. David Everitt, serving as Amanda's father and Eric's grandfather, confirmed that his 13-year-old granddaughter, while shot four times, called 911 and identified the shooter to responders.
First responders transported the girl to a hospital in critical condition. By Saturday, August 15, police said she was stable.
Court records show Hickman was convicted in 2024 of misdemeanor fourth-degree child abuse and sentenced to one year in prison. A misdemeanor is a lower-level criminal offense, and fourth-degree child abuse in Michigan law sits at the lower end of the charging spectrum for offenses involving minors. Those charges originated from a complaint filed by his ex-wife, Katie, who had initiated divorce proceedings in September 2023.
The sequence of events across the three scenes and the relationships among victims and the shooter remain under active investigation. Police have not publicly detailed a motive, nor have they clarified the specific sequence in which Hickman moved between locations or how he knew each victim. The pending autopsy on Hickman may resolve the question of whether he took his own life or died by other means.
The fact that the 13-year-old survivor was able to call 911 while critically wounded, and to identify the shooter, likely shaped the immediate law enforcement response. Her account would have given police the suspect's name and a description while the rampage was still unfolding or shortly after, informing the manhunt that ultimately located Hickman in the wooded area where he was found dead beside his last victim.
The broader context here involves a gunman with a recent criminal history involving child abuse, stemming from domestic conflict within his own family, escalating to a multi-scene shooting that killed five people across what appears to be a connected network of households. The presence of a teenage victim and a surviving juvenile witness places this incident within a pattern of mass shootings in the United States where prior domestic violence or abuse histories are documented in the suspect's record. The 2024 conviction and one-year sentence for fourth-degree child abuse reflects the lower end of the charging spectrum for offenses involving minors. Whether that outcome was appropriate given what followed is a question that will inevitably inform public discussion, though it cannot be answered from the facts currently available.
Missaukee County is a rural area in northern Michigan, and multi-scene shooting sprees in such settings present particular challenges for first responders: distance between scenes, limited immediately available tactical resources, and the difficulty of establishing a perimeter — a secure encirclement of an area — across dispersed locations. The manhunt for Hickman ended with the discovery of his body, but the interval between the 911 call from the 13-year-old survivor and that discovery has not been publicly specified.
