What prompted Michael Hance to go on a shooting spree in a middle-class suburb of Akron, Ohio, on Sunday is uncertain, but it’s clear he knew who he wanted dead as he chillingly took aim at his neighbors and relatives of his live-in girlfriend, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He even hunted down his girlfriend’s 11-year-old nephew, Scotty Dieter, who was hiding in a neighbor’s basement with five other people. He fatally shot the boy but not the others.
Armed with two handguns, the 51-year-old Hance went on a house-to-house rampage in his neighborhood, pumping bullets into eight people, killing seven and critically wounding one — his live-in girlfriend, Becky Dieter. She was in a hospital Monday with multiple wounds, police said. His barrage went on for 10 minutes until police shot and killed him outside the house where young Dieter had just been killed. The Akron Beacon Journal said neighbors had recently bickered with Hance over the condition of his property.