A quiet Michigan community was plunged into terror Friday after five people were found dead at multiple locations, triggering a massive search for an armed suspect that ended when authorities discovered him dead in a wooded area.

The violence first came to the attention of police at approximately 11:40 a.m., when Michigan State Police troopers responded to a Missaukee County property following a report that someone had been shot.

What officers discovered inside was far worse than a single shooting.

Three people were found dead at the residence, while a fourth victim was alive but critically injured.

Before troopers arrived, the suspected gunman had already fled.

Authorities identified the person of interest as 39-year-old Chad Hickman and warned residents that he should be considered armed and dangerous.

As law-enforcement officers searched the surrounding region, the scale of the bloodshed continued to grow.

Police subsequently discovered another victim in the woods near Whitlock Lake. A fifth person was found dead at a separate home, according to state police.

Those discoveries transformed the investigation into a multi-location killing spree and intensified the urgency of the manhunt.

Officers began searching for Hickman while residents were warned to remain alert. His vehicle was eventually located near the wooded area surrounding Whitlock Lake.

Authorities later found Hickman dead nearby.

Police did not immediately disclose how he died, and the circumstances surrounding his death remained under investigation. It was unclear from the initial public statement whether authorities recovered a weapon near his body or whether officers had directly confronted him.

Although Hickman was identified as the suspected gunman, investigators had not publicly released the evidence connecting him to every shooting location.

The identities of the five people killed were also initially withheld. Police did not immediately explain how the victims knew Hickman or whether they were related to one another.

Those unanswered questions left the community confronting both grief and uncertainty.

“This situation is heartbreaking for the community and challenging for the investigators involved,” Michigan State Police Lt. Ashley Miller said in a written statement.

“We remain committed to conducting a thorough investigation and will provide updates as new information becomes available.”

The surviving victim remained in critical condition, according to the initial report. Authorities did not release that person’s identity or provide additional details about their injuries.

Court records cited by the Detroit News show that Hickman had a prior criminal history.

He was convicted of misdemeanor fourth-degree child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of children in connection with a 2010 case investigated by the Missaukee County Sheriff’s Department. He reportedly received a one-year jail sentence.

More recent court records described an unstable and deeply troubled marriage.

Hickman’s former wife, Katie Hickman, initiated divorce proceedings in September 2023 after the relationship had “deteriorated significantly,” according to a written opinion issued by Judge Melissa Ransom following a 2025 divorce trial.

The judge wrote that allegations of domestic violence involving both spouses were uncontested during the proceedings.

Katie Hickman told the court that her marriage to Chad was characterized by “control, coercion, and fear,” according to the opinion.

Those past allegations may become relevant as investigators attempt to establish a motive and reconstruct the events leading to Friday’s deaths. They do not, by themselves, prove what occurred during the shooting spree.

Detectives will now face the complicated task of processing several crime scenes, examining firearms and ballistic evidence, analyzing phones and other digital records, and establishing a precise timeline.

They will also need to determine whether the victims were specifically targeted, whether the shootings arose from a family or personal dispute, and how Hickman traveled between the locations without being intercepted.

With the suspected gunman dead, prosecutors will never present the case to a jury. That places even greater importance on the investigative record, which may provide the victims’ families with the only authoritative account of why the killings occurred.

The absence of a criminal trial also means some questions may never receive complete answers.

For several hours Friday, residents faced the frightening possibility that an armed killer was moving through their community. The discovery of Hickman’s body ended the immediate public threat, but it did nothing to lessen the magnitude of what police had already found.

Five lives were gone. Another person was fighting to survive. Multiple locations had become crime scenes, and families were waiting for notifications that would permanently change their lives.

What began with a single report of someone being shot expanded rapidly into one of the darkest days in Missaukee County’s recent history.

Authorities have promised a thorough investigation.

For the devastated community, the urgent manhunt may be over—but the search for an explanation has only begun.