Michigan Gunman’s Neighbor Says the Man Fired a Gun in the Backyard

Megan Bender and her husband, Tyler, live on a quiet dead-end street in Lansing, next door to where Anthony McRae, the 43-year-old man identified by the authorities as the gunman in the Michigan State mass shooting, had been living with his father, Michael McRae, for about a year, she said.

Ms. Bender said the son appeared not to drive a car, and was often seen walking to and from his father’s house. Neighbors in the densely populated area were upset last summer, she said, when the son fired a gun in the backyard.

She spoke in her living room on Tuesday morning, having hardly slept overnight. She had been listening to the police scanner on Monday evening when the Michigan State campus in East Lansing was locked down and the police were pursuing a suspect in the shooting.

Shortly after she heard a report that the suspect had killed himself, she said, squad cars arrived on her street, and officers shone a large spotlight on the small red McRae house next door.

“It has to be Mike’s son,” she remembered her husband saying.

Early Tuesday morning, a neighbor texted Ms. Bender a screenshot from his security camera, showing Anthony McRae walking down the street, away from the house, at around 2:30 p.m. Monday.

Ms. Bender described Michael McRae as a wonderful neighbor, friendly and generous, a retired autoworker and churchgoer who collected metal scraps to resell.

No one appeared to be home at Mr. McRae’s house on Tuesday morning.

Ms. Bender wondered whether Anthony McRae had been on his way home when he shot himself.

“What would we have done if he had made it here?” she said. “He could have taken all his neighbors out. This is all too close to home.”

Kari Fox, 61, lives nearby and is retired from a job handling medical records at Michigan State. Like the Benders, she said knew the older Mr. McRae, who would often stop to chat with her in her front yard, but she said she did not know his son.

“I’m not surprised that this happened here, because it’s happening everywhere,” Ms. Fox said about the mass shooting, adding: “It’s horrible. It’s sick. I don’t know how anyone could do something like that.”

Sam Easter contributed reporting.