Man Kills 2 in Suburban Detroit Building

A 56-year-old man facing possible eviction from a senior housing complex because neighbors had complained about his using coarse language shot and killed two women Tuesday and critically wounded a third at the suburban Detroit building, police said.

Kenneth Miller, who police say holed up in his top-floor apartment after firing as many as 20 rounds, was taken into custody when police stormed his room more than three hours after the shooting began.

He was handcuffed and rushed by ambulance to a hospital because, police said, he had taken a narcotic and needed to be evaluated before being jailed. Police confiscated a .22-caliber rifle.

About 400 students at Raupp Elementary School in Lincoln Park, Mich., were on the playground half a mile away when the shooting erupted. Teachers rushed the children back inside and locked the doors.

Miller, a resident of the 14-story Lincoln Park Senior Citizens Towers for about a year, had been summoned to a meeting with city housing officials because of complaints from female residents who alleged he used inappropriate, harassing language. Miller arrived at the hearing in the complex’s business office shortly before noon, witnesses said.

“We asked him not to [use such language] and said it was inappropriate, and he was very upset,” Phyllis McLenon, deputy director of the Lincoln Park Housing Commission, told WDIV-TV. Miller “was very dissatisfied and making threats. . . . He kept saying he wouldn’t have this character assassination and that he would take care of it. He was very upset . . . with some of the ladies who were complaining about him.”

The man said he had a continuing problem with the women, McLenon said.

About 10 minutes after Miller left the meeting, a radio in the office crackled, McLenon said. It was a maintenance worker on a walkie-talkie saying that Miller was coming back. McLenon said that Miller shot one woman in the business office and another as she stood in a doorway. Others ran into a nearby bathroom or flung themselves under a desk. “He came in looking for us,” McLenon said.

Fire Department officials identified one of the dead as Marilyn Higgins, 64, a former city councilwoman and longtime member of the Lincoln Park Housing Commission. The other victim was identified as Alveta King. Her age was not released.

The wounded woman was identified by authorities as Mary Parsley, 55, a resident of the apartment building.

Higgins and her husband, Charles, were among several people in a nearby room sorting through day-old baked goods donated by a grocer when the suspect returned.

“We were all looking at him when I realized he was shooting,” Charles Higgins told the Detroit Free Press. “I went to a room where I thought I could get to a phone, and my wife came down the hall after me. She started hollering at him to stop doing that, and he just shot her.”

It was unclear whether any of the victims had lodged complaints against Miller.

After shooting the people in the first-floor business office, the gunman apparently retreated to the upper levels of the apartment building, where a witness said he peeked his head out and fired shots from several different windows.

Nearly three hours after the rampage began, two men who said they were Miller’s sons went on local television and pleaded for their father to surrender.

“Dad, please give us a call,” one said. “Things will work out. God is with you and with all of us. And please call us and just end this peacefully. Don’t let anyone else get hurt.”

The sons disputed the allegations against their father, who they said was taking medication for depression.

“There were some false accusations against him, that’s all I know,” said one. “They were backing him in a corner.”

Many people who knew Miller seemed nearly as stunned by the revelation that he was the alleged killer as by the mayhem in the suburb 10 miles south of Detroit.

“I never heard him use foul language, but a lot of the ladies complained he was vulgar,” said Chris Sullivan, who lives in the building.

A courteous military veteran, according to several, the suspect was best known for sitting with his guitar in the recreation room and singing country-and-western standards--to the delight of many residents.

“He’d just sit there with his guitar and sing. He was really talented,” Elizabeth Frasure, 80, said by telephone minutes after she declined police offers to escort her from her 10th-floor apartment.

“He was soft-spoken and nice. He didn’t seem to bother anybody,” Frasure said.

Times wire services contributed to this story.