A park visitor discovered the body of a 19-year-old Inkster man near a boat launch at Proud Lake on Monday morning, and the Oakland County Sheriff's Office has confirmed it is investigating the death as a homicide.
The victim has been identified as Andre Sontay Avant Jr. The Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office determined the cause of death was a gunshot wound and ruled the manner of death a homicide.
According to CBS Detroit, the body was found around 9 a.m. near the lake on Wixom Road in Commerce Township. No suspects have been named.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael J. Bouchard did not mince words:
"This was a brutal and senseless homicide that has left a family and community searching for answers. We are committed to pursuing justice for this individual and holding every person involved fully accountable."
That language, "every person involved," suggests investigators believe more than one individual may bear responsibility. But as of now, the public knows almost nothing about who did this or why. No motive has been offered. No suspect description has been released. A 19-year-old is dead, and the trail, for the moment, is cold enough that deputies are asking the public for help.
Deputies are specifically seeking information about Avant's whereabouts on Sunday or early Monday, the window leading up to the discovery of his body. That timeframe matters. It suggests investigators are still trying to reconstruct the final hours of his life, including how and when he arrived in the Proud Lake area.
The Sheriff's Office is urging anyone with information about the shooting, or anyone who may have seen Avant during that window, to contact Crime Stoppers of Michigan at 800-SPEAK-UP.
Nineteen years old. Found near a boat launch in a park. Shot to death. There is no political abstraction that softens that reality for Andre Sontay Avant Jr.'s family.
Stories like this one rarely generate the sustained national attention that other crimes do. There are no viral clips, no protest marches, no cable news panels dissecting the politics of it. But the violence is no less real, and the grief is no less devastating. A family in Inkster is burying a teenager this week because someone decided his life was disposable.
This is the kind of crime that conservative voters think about when they talk about public safety. Not in the abstract. Not as a talking point. As the thing that happens to real families in real communities when the justice system fails to deter, when streets are not safe, when young men end up dead, and nobody can explain why.
Commerce Township is not a high-crime area. Proud Lake is a state recreation area, the kind of place where families go hiking and fishing. The fact that a young man was shot and left near a boat launch there should unsettle anyone who thinks violent crime is someone else's problem, confined to someone else's zip code.
Sheriff Bouchard has pledged accountability. That pledge now needs to produce results. The public can help, and the Sheriff's Office has made the ask clear. If you know something, the number is 800-SPEAK-UP.
Andre Sontay Avant Jr. was nineteen. Somebody knows what happened to him.
