Gunman was in property dispute, neighbors say

Associated Press

COPLEY, Ohio

A gunman who killed seven people during a weekend rampage in his neighborhood cornered one of his victims, his girlfriend’s 11-year-old nephew, in the basement of a house, ordered out the family sheltering the boy and then shot him, police said Monday.

Michael Hance’s cold-blooded killing of such a young victim after stalking seven other people on a tidy suburban Akron street named Goodenough Avenue was, neighbors said, the culmination of a dispute over a home that once belonged to his girlfriend’s parents.

Hance, 51, had no previous criminal record before the outburst late Sunday morning and his death in a shootout with police in Copley, where a flag flew at half-staff Monday outside the home where the carnage began.

Hance had recently grown angry over residents’ comments about the property where he lived with his girlfriend, Becky Dieter, neighbor Carol Eshleman said. About a month ago, Hance’s next-door neighbor Gudrun “Gerdie” Johnson had asked Hance to clean up the property, which included a broken-down car on blocks.

Johnson related the encounter to Eshleman, explaining that she’d never seen Hance so upset. “He said, ‘Get off my property and don’t come back,”’ Eshleman said.

Johnson, 64, was killed in the attack, along with her husband, 67-year-old Russell Johnson; their 44-year-old son Bryan Johnson and his daughter Autumn, 16; Becky Dieter’s brother, Craig Dieter, and his 11-year-old son, Scott; and an unidentified girl who was slain while in a parked car with Autumn outside the Johnsons’ home.

Becky Dieter, the gunman’s longtime girlfriend and a Veterans Affairs clerk, was also shot but survived and remains hospitalized.

Authorities on Monday were still trying to work out details of the shootings and a motive for Hance’s actions. But comments from police and neighbors help stitch together a picture of a man prone to conflict and under increasing pressure from neighbors to take his life elsewhere.

Hance had worked at a printer’s shop in Akron but quit after a dispute and didn’t work again, Eshleman said, although Becky Dieter urged him to find a job.