The United States
Black couple's crime spree ends in 4 murders
I'm not sure, but I think the victims were all white and Middle Eastern. But it probably won't be charged as a hate crime.
The morning after the shootings, Jesse Lee, 6; Elly Lee, 31, and Scott Spooner, 9, all of Westland, show their support at the store.
It's a small video camera mounted inside Neil's Party Store in Westland, but police say it captured in detail how a well-dressed Michael L. Schofield, with the help of his girlfriend, executed four men. One man is already lying shot to death inside the store; another clings to life as the woman, posing as an employee, cheerfully invites two unsuspecting customers in. They take three steps inside the store and Schofield sneaks up behind them and shoots them in the head with a 9mm handgun. The killing wasn't finished.
Police say Michael Schofield and his girlfriend Leslie Gordon were involved in the killings of four people.
Schofield's alleged accomplice, Leslie Gordon, 24, yells, "There's some more coming up," as a red pickup truck pulls up.
Schofield tries unsuccessfully to open a cash register and then yells, "Let's go, baby."
The couple run out of the store and Schofield fires three shots through the pickup driver's side window, killing both occupants.
In the end, dead were: Feras Yousif, a 29-year-old store employee from Oak Park and nephew of the owner; James Kuebler, a 35-year-old customer from Westland; Kenneth Littlefield of Canton, the 63-year-old driver of the pickup, and his nephew and passenger, Keith Gaddis, 44, of Detroit. Conrad Hasper, a 24-year-old employee, survived a gunshot to the face and called police from a cell phone. Fuad Abuali, 29, a customer, stumbled home to his father's house with a gunshot wound to the head.
Both men were hospitalized.
The triggerman was Schofield, who in 1987 shot and killed a classmate at Murray Wright High School in Detroit and served time at W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Green Oak Township. In 1998, he was convicted of attempting to carry a concealed weapon.
Officials said Gordon was a delinquent ward of the state from May 1992 until her 19th birthday, in 1998.
Gordon had been convicted on minor charges of being truant from home and school. Gordon is unemployed. Schofield was on disability from a cement company in Novi.
Westland police and Wayne County Prosecutor Mike Duggan described the surveillance tape seized from the store on Newburgh Road.
"When you see the video at the preliminary examination, it's going to be as chilling as anything you've ever seen," Duggan said. Gordon has a Sept. 25 court date. "There is no question here about whether she was a full participant in this action," Duggan said.
Gordon was arraigned Friday in Westland's 18th District Court on four counts of first-degree murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of assault with intent to murder and two counts of assault with intent to rob while armed. The maximum sentence is life in prison.
"She admitted to being in the store and she admitted that she entered the store and that she and Mr. Schofield intended to rob the store," Westland Police Sgt. David Heater said in court Friday.
Gordon is being held without bond.
Police said she confessed after being arrested Thursday night in Detroit, where police cornered the couple after a chase. Schofield fatally shot himself after crashing his Corvette and leading police on a foot chase.
The crime spree apparently began at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Food & Wine Bazaar store in Novi. Manager Raad Dawood of West Bloomfield said Gordon walked in and asked for a lottery ticket. Dawood said when he looked up Schofield was pointing a gun at him. Dawood said he gave Schofield a few hundred dollars and offered to carry the store's safe to their car because he didn't know the combination.
He said Schofield spoke calmly to him during the holdup and left him tied up in the walk-in cooler. "He was calm, I don't know what happened to him after he left here," Dawood said of Schofield. "I cry for those people he killed."
Friday in Westland, customers placed bouquets at Neil's. Owners Amy and Nick Bakko wept and hugged their regulars. Yousif was just days shy of his 30th birthday. "I wish it was me," Nick Bakko said, tears crawling down his face. "I wish I would have been there instead."
Duggan said Yousif pleaded with Schofield for his life before Schofield shot him and dragged him into a walk-in cooler. "It's like a massacre. Why? Why?" Bakko said, dressed in all black and wiping away tears. "It's a bad, bad dream. A nightmare. I still don't believe it."
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2481368/detail.htm
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