Update: Dispatchers confirm suspect, James Eric Davis Jr. has been taken into custody. Police have not released details about his arrest. More details to come.
Hours after James Eric Davis Jr. allegedly shot and killed his parents in his room on the fourth-floor of a Central Michigan University dorm, police said Friday they don't know where he is, even as they concentrated their search on a large area park.
No one from the CMU police department, or any other police agency, had seen Davis Jr. since he was captured on security cameras running down railroad tracks away from Campbell Hall, CMU police Lt. Larry Klaus said during a 4 p.m. Friday press briefing. No one from the public had called tip lines saying they had seen Davis Jr. either, Klaus added.
Still, more than a hundred police from local, state and federal agencies were focusing their search on Mill Pond Park, a 90-acre site in Mount Pleasant. CMU is about 2 1/2 hours northwest of Detroit.
Davis was last seen wearing mustard colored jeans and a blue hoodie, although police said Friday afternoon they had found clothing along the railroad tracks where Davis had fled.
It all started early Friday morning, when police got a series of calls from the residence hall saying shots had been fired on the fourth floor.
Found in the room were Davis' parents. The Central Michigan University Police Department identified the victims as James Eric Davis Sr., and Diva Jeneen Davis.
Multiple police agencies continued to search for the suspect. All planned campus events and activities have been canceled until further notice. Classes at the Mt. Pleasant campus scheduled for Saturday also were canceled.
llinois State Rep. Emmanuel Chris Welch said in a tweet Friday afternoon: "My sincerest condolences go out to the family of Bellwood Police Officer James Davis Sr. and his wife who were shot and killed this morning. May they RIP."
Vice President Mike Pence weighed in as well during a stop in Detroit.
"Our hearts go out to the fallen and especially local, state and federal agencies who are working on the apprehension and the investigation," he said. "We have to act and we will. We’ve got a lot of work to do. This president and this administration will not rest until we make our schools safe."
Central Michigan University's Campbell Hall (Photo: Google Maps)
The campus and the surrounding town were locked down. Police were seen riding armored vehicles through town, and students were sheltered in their rooms and buildings until mid-afternoon, when police began escorting them to parking lots and a local hotel to meet their parents. This was to be the last day of classes before spring break.
Sienna Higgins, a 20-year-old CMU junior in early childhood studies from Grand Rapids, had just bought a coffee at the campus Starbucks on Friday morning when she was told she could not leave the building. She was stuck there for the next five hours.
Higgins said she was scared and stressed, but still made the best of her time in captivity by writing a required online exam in special education for young children.
"I think CMU has handled this really well," Higgins said.
She was less pleased with how a bus company handled the situation, as it appeared late Friday the pickup spot for her bus ride to Grand Rapids, which she had already paid for, was moved without her knowledge, and she may have missed her ride home for spring break.
Mary Thomas, 55, of Grand Rapids, came to Mount Pleasant, to pick up her daughter.
"She was just going to drive home for break, but when we heard the news we wanted to come and get her," Thomas said in a phone interview with the Free Press. "She's OK. She was in a different dorm, but she's shaken up. It's pretty traumatic. I couldn't believe the news when I heard it this morning. My husband broke a ton of speed limits getting us here today. I just want her home safe."
Local merchants also had to adjust.
At O’Kelly’s Sports Bar and Grille near CMU, a longtime popular gathering spot for CMU students, staff were keeping the back door locked but letting customers in as they arrived. Even with spring break starting, Friday, during the Big 10 basketball tournament, is a busy day at the bar, said owner Cheryl Hunter.
“We’re just making sure that our patrons are safe,” Hunter said. “It is a bit of a shock.”
Any kind of killing is unusual in Mt. Pleasant, she said.
“This young man, who obviously is troubled, killed his parents, and that’s very sad.”
Davis is a black male, approximately 19 years old, 5-feet-10 and 135 pounds. He is a sophomore at the school.
Police had some sort of interaction Thursday night with him. Police were called to the dorm for reports of a disturbed student. They took him to a Michigan Medicine clinic in Mount Pleasant, where he was treated overnight and released Friday morning, about an hour before the shooting.
Kendall Gilder met Davis in the fourth grade at Charles Reed Elementary School in Joliet, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.
"We clicked immediately," he said. Even their teacher noticed. "He said 'I can see that you guys are going to have a long friendship.'"
His first thought when he heard that Davis was a suspect in the killings was "how we were like brothers and how we were always together, messing around, goofing around."
"James has always been a good kid," Gilder said. "This was not something that was ever to be expected and, even at this moment, I can’t bring myself to believe it."
Deantre DeYoung met Davis during their freshman year at Plainfield South High School, which Davis attended for three years before switching to Plainfield Central High School, from which he graduated in 2016.
Davis "wasn’t a bad kid," DeYoung said. "He wasn’t a thug. He wasn’t constantly in trouble with the police.
"He’s a smart kid. He went to school for academics. He wasn’t there to mess around."
Davis' parents "were loving and caring about him, and they were always on top of what he did school-wise," he added. "Whatever situation went down between them, it has to be more than him being a bad person, because as a family they loved each other. I know that for certain."
Steve Lamberti, the humanities division chair at Plainfield Central and the former coach of the boy’s basketball team, said he coached Davis Jr. during his senior year.
Lamberti described Davis Jr. as a polite and quiet kid. He said Davis Jr. didn’t have a lot of playing time, but always showed up on time.
“He was a typical high school kid,” he said. “No problems at all.”
Davis Jr.'s Twitter account is full of sports videos and retweets from celebrities such as Zendaya and Chance the Rapper. He's tweeted about his class schedule, planning to dye his hair and Alabama football.
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