Michigan church shooting leaves at least 4 dead, 8 injured, police say

A man drove his vehicle through the front doors of a church and shot at least 10 people, killing at least four people and wounding at least eight others before dying in a shootout with police, officials said.

Police said the perpetrator, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, a former US Marine from the nearby town of Burton, deliberately set fire to the church, which was engulfed in flames and billowing smoke.

Smoke billowed from the building as firefighters sprayed the blaze with water while fire trucks and emergency vehicles were parked nearby, footage on social media showed.

Two of the shooting victims died and eight others were hospitalized, officials said. Several hours after the shooting, police reported finding at least two more bodies in the charred remains of the church, which had not yet been cleared and may contain other victims.

"There are some that are unaccounted for," Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye told a press conference.

Hundreds of people were in the church when Sanford drove into the building, Renye said.

Two law enforcement officers, one from the state Department of Natural Resources and another from Grand Blanc Township, rushed to the scene within 30 seconds of receiving calls and engaged the suspect in an exchange of gunfire, shooting him dead in the parking lot about eight minutes after the incident began, Renye said.

Investigators will search the shooter's home and phone records in search of a motive, Renye said. 

“My heart is breaking for the Grand Blanc community," Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement posted to social media. "Violence anywhere especially in a place of worship, is unacceptable," she said.

Grand Blanc, a town of 7,700 people, is about 97 km northwest of Detroit.

National officials, including US Attorney General Pam Bondi and US President Donald Trump, posted that they had been briefed on the shooting.

"Such violence at a place of worship is heartbreaking and chilling," Bondi posted on X.

Trump in a statement on Truth Social said that the shooting "appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America" and said the FBI was on the scene. "THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!"

The Michigan rampage marked the 324th mass shooting in the US in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks such incidents and describes a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.

It was also the third US mass shooting in less than 24 hours, including the North Carolina incident and a shooting a few hours later at a casino in Eagle Pass, Texas, that killed at least two people and injured several others.