Rewind: News from the last 7 days

Mayor Andy Schor placed Lansing under a Code Red emergency heat advisory Monday and extended hours for the city’s four community centers through Friday to 8:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. Other cooling options include Capital Area District Library branches, the Neighborhood Empowerment Center, CATA Transportation Center, Hunter Park Pool and Advent House Ministries. Ingham County Parks is waiving vehicle entrance fees at all of its parks. The Foster, Gier and Alfreda Schmidt Southside centers are closed today for Juneteenth, but Letts is open and the CATA center will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. CATA is offering free rides to cooling centers. Pets in carriers and crates will also be allowed in community centers this week. The Code Red declaration allows shelters to extend their capacity limits. Go to lansingmi.gov/990/Warming-and-Cooling-Centers or call 2-1-1 for more info.

East Lansing has offered the Hannah Community Center and East Lansing Public Library as cooling centers this week. The library is closed today for Juneteenth, but the Hannah Center will be open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Hannah and the library will be open regular hours the rest of the week: 6 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday and noon-8 p.m. Sunday for Hannah; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday for the library. The lansingmi.gov/990/Warming-and-Cooling-Centers link has info for additional cooling centers in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties.

Lansing Police Chief Ellery Sosebee, who has served since December 2021, is retiring on June 28. Sosebee joined the force in 2002 as a road patrol officer and has worked on the tactical, honor guard and emergency management teams. He was promoted to lieutenant in 2014, then captain in 2019. Assistant Chief Rob Backus was named interim chief. “Ellery’s strong, steady leadership during some stressful times has been a tremendous asset to this City and to me personally,” Mayor Schor said.

Thomas Blackmon, 35, of Lansing, was shot and killed Saturday on the 4000 block of MacDougal Circle in Southwest Lansing. No arrests were made as of Monday afternoon, and police said the shooting was not a random act. The homicide is the ninth in Lansing since April 10.

Fires at two Holt Public School buildings last weekend are being investigated by Delhi Township and Ingham County officials as arson. The first two were Friday at Washington Woods Middle School, one in a dumpster and the second in an unspecified location. A third occurred on the roof of Horizon Elementary School on Saturday. A trained Michigan State Police dog determined accelerators were used on the roof. Both schools were vandalized with graffiti over the weekend as well. No one was injured.

Micah Davis, 36, was sentenced to life in prison last week for first-degree murder for killing Emiliano Hernandez Sr., 93, in Lansing Dec. 30, 2020. Ingham County Circuit Judge Jim Jamo also sentenced Davis to 13 to 20 years for home invasion and 5½ to 10 years for assault with intent to do great bodily harm. Hernandez’s son, Emil, 60, was critically injured during the invasion but survived, only to die from COVID-19 a few months later.

Former MSU Board of Trustees Chair Rema Vassar raised her middle finger during a March 3 online meeting where six of her fellow board members voted to censure her and asked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to remove her from office, an MSU Office of Audit, Risk and Compliance investigation found. The report said the office reviewed a recording of the meeting and that Vassar said she had not seen the video and was unwilling to review it. It also said that Vassar’s actions violated the Board’s Code of Conduct. The report has been forwarded to Whitmer.

MSU’s School of Social Work and the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation was awarded a $1,125,417 Patient Well-Being and Survivorship grant June 3 by the Department of Defense to improve psychosocial support for mesothelioma caregivers. The research team wants to improve understanding of mesothelioma caregivers’ experience during a four-year study. It will create a 10-week-long intervention group led by social workers with experience in oncology and mesothelioma. The team includes MSU Social Work doctoral students Jen Hirsch and Linda Zhang.

Public safety

A crash Friday near Laingsburg killed a 18-year-old male and injured a postal worker, both yet to be identified. The teen was driving south on Hollister Road and rear-ended a U.S. Postal Service vehicle driven by a 34-year-old woman. … An unidentified 5-year-old boy drowned in a pool Monday in Leroy Township, near Williamston.