GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - A suspected killer who is recovering after being struck by a police SUV on a busy Grand Rapids freeway amid an exchange of gunfire is described in court records as an occasionally incorrigible bully prone to violent outbursts and threatening behavior.
For all the complaints against Adam Kenneth Nolin, the 33-year-old Wyoming man insists that he has been a victim of abuse. And he says it was from the family of Tia Mae Randall - the woman he’s accused of killing.
“I got you. You know what happens next,’’ one of Randall’s brothers said after beating Nolin in March of 2016, he alleges in a court affidavit.
In hand-written personal protection order petitions rife with spelling errors, Nolin contends the family of Tia Randall, his 27-year-old girlfriend, had it in for him.
“I do know both brothers and mother,’’ Nolin wrote in a 2016 personal protection order affidavit. The brothers, he wrote, “do have access and is fully capable of firing multipl (sic) types of gun. . . .’’
The March, 2016 dust-up started after Nolin asked Randall’s mother to stop visiting his house in the Creekside Estates Mobile Home Park.
Nolin went to Kent County Circuit Court seeking three personal protection orders following the March, 2016 incident outside his home at 637 Spruce Lane SW in Wyoming. All were denied.
Wyoming police on Thursday morning went to the Spruce Lane address, located near 52nd Street and Clyde Park Avenue SW, where they found Tia Randall dead from a single gunshot.
Police quickly identified Nolin as a suspect and put out an area-wide broadcast, describing him as having a shaved head with a large mark or mole on his forehead.
Nolin, who stands 5-feet, 2-inches tall and weighs 180 pounds, was last seen driving a 1996 black Dodge pickup with a broad red stripe on the sides and hood, investigators said Thursday morning.
Police spotted the pickup and began a pursuit, which took officers onto northbound U.S. 131 in Grand Rapids. Nolin’s vehicle crashed in the northbound lanes of the S-curve, at which time he jumped out of the pickup and fired a handgun at police.
A Grand Rapids police officer used his cruiser to strike Nolin, “ending the lethal threat,’’ Grand Rapids and Wyoming police said in a joint press release. The northbound freeway through downtown Grand Rapids remained closed for more than four hours, but reopened at 3 p.m.
The Kent County Prosecutor’s Office is expected to file charges against Nolin in upcoming days. Nolin remains hospitalized in serious but stable condition.
Nolin, who has lived at various addresses in Grand Rapids and Wyoming, has a history of assaultive behavior in both cities dating back to his early 20s.
A 2007 assault and battery conviction in Grand Rapids earned him a month in jail. He was convicted of creating a disturbance the following year. Four years ago, Nolin was charged with felonious assault for pulling a knife on a Wyoming man who asked him to leave his home.
The Sept. 2014 incident resulted in jail, community service and probation. Nolin was back in trouble the following year, charged with assault and battery for an incident in Wyoming. A judge placed him on probation; Nolin was released from probation in June of 2017.
Nolin has also accumulated numerous driving violations which left him without a driver’s license for a while. He’s been ticketed for driving on a suspended or restricted license in Michigan, Virginia and Ohio.
His proclivity towards violence is also detailed in three personal protection orders that were approved but have since expired.
One involves a woman with whom he had a child. She accused Nolin of harassing and threatening her in 2009. In one instance, Nolin threatened to “blow up her house,’’ according to court documents.
In 2007, a 16-year-old girl who was dating Nolin at the time said she feared for her safety. Nolin, then 21 years old, “has hit me on more than one occasion,’’ the teen wrote in her request for a personal protection order.
“He is hacking into my emails, he is calling my house after being asked not to,’’ she wrote. “I’m afraid of him hitting me.’’
A 23-year-old man also got a personal protection order against Nolin, saying Nolin had been targeting him with assaultive behavior for two years, culminating in a March, 2007 fight that led to criminal charges.
“I want it to end, please,’’ the man wrote.
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