‘She is a hero’: 13-year-old survivor of Michigan shooting rampage called 911

Shot Four Times, She Still Dialed 911: Michigan Teen’s Calm Under Fire Becomes a Symbol of Resilience

Wanderstayfinder.com – In a small corner of northern Michigan where pine forests swallow sound and neighbors know each other by first name, a thirteen-year-old girl lay bleeding after four bullets had passed through her body. Around her, the wreckage of a Friday afternoon was still settling into silence. Yet before any uniformed officer reached the scene, before investigators could even confirm who had done this, she picked up a phone and spoke to 911 operators. She told them she had been shot. She identified the man responsible.

That single act of composure — performed by a child while her own organs were failing — has turned her into something more than a survivor in the eyes of everyone who knows her story. Family members, neighbors, and even relatives of those killed have used the word “hero” to describe what she did in those final seconds before paramedics arrived.

The Rampage Across Three Locations

State police confirmed that the violence unfolded across three separate sites within Missaukee County on Friday. At the first location, responders discovered four bodies or near-bodies: a sixteen-year-old boy already dead, a forty-five-year-old man dead, a forty-year-old woman dead, and the thirteen-year-old girl still breathing but in critical condition. A second residence held the body of a fifty-three-year-old victim. In a wooded stretch beyond both homes, officers found a twenty-nine-year-old woman lying beside the suspected gunman, both already lifeless.

Six people died in total. Every fatality was caused by gunshot wounds, police stated. The girl was transported to a hospital while still critical; by Saturday her condition had stabilized enough for authorities to describe her as stable.

The Shooter and the Manhunt

Chad Hickman, thirty-nine years old, was named as the suspected gunman. He allegedly killed five people before being located dead in the woods beside one of his victims following a police manhunt. Investigators said at the time they could not determine whether he took his own life; an autopsy was still pending.

Hickman had fled the first scene before any officer arrived. Nevertheless, Lt Ashley Miller, the state police spokesperson handling the briefing, noted that investigators recognized his identity almost immediately upon reaching the area. She declined to explain the mechanism by which they made that identification.

Court records show Hickman was convicted in 2024 of a misdemeanor charge — fourth-degree child abuse — and received a one-year prison sentence. The underlying complaint had been filed by his ex-wife, Katie, who had initiated divorce proceedings in September 2023. Police did not release the victims’ full names or clarify their personal relationships to Hickman as of Saturday.

A Family’s Grief and Praise

David Everitt, a grandfather in the community, took to Facebook to name two of his lost family members: Amanda Everitt, forty years old, and her sixteen-year-old son Eric. His words carried the weight of a man watching his own world fracture in real time.

“This world just lost two beautiful people and one is clinging to life.”

He then turned his attention to his granddaughter — the thirteen-year-old shot four times — and asked readers to pray for her. He described how she, despite the wounds, still managed to reach a phone, dial 911, and name the shooter.

“She is a hero,”

he wrote. Two other victims’ families echoed that sentiment in separate remarks relayed through local channels.

A Community Shaken

Missaukee County is not a place accustomed to mass violence. Its population clusters around small towns where the nearest hospital may be an hour’s drive and where a shooting of this scale rewrites the emotional landscape overnight. Miller acknowledged the weight of that reality in a Friday statement.

“This situation is heartbreaking for the community and challenging for the investigators involved.”

She added, speaking to reporters later:

“It obviously has rocked and crushed [the Missaukee] community at this point. They’re looking for answers, and they want to know why.”

The Wider American Pattern

The Missaukee killings were not an isolated statistical anomaly. By Sunday, the Gun Violence Archive had logged at least fifteen mass murders in the United States that calendar year — events defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed. The overwhelming majority of those events involve firearms.

That pattern has fueled recurring calls for stronger federal gun regulation. Yet Congress, across multiple sessions and administrations, has not enacted the kind of comprehensive restrictions advocates have proposed. The gap between the frequency of these events and the legislative response remains one of the most persistent tensions in American public policy.

For now, in a small northern county where the pines still stand where they stood on Friday, residents are processing grief, answering questions no investigation can fully answer, and trying to understand why a thirteen-year-old’s last conscious act was not screaming but dialing a number that would send help her way.