Lansing’s police chief is openly weighing whether five fatal attacks along a popular river trail could be linked, and one man already faces a murder charge.
Five men have been found dead or dying along the Lansing River Trail in Michigan’s capital city, several with similar facial injuries and under circumstances that have forced police to confront a grim public question. At a press conference last Friday, Police Chief Robert Backus said investigators are treating the cases as active and are examining whether they may be connected.
Fox News reported that the deaths stretched over roughly a year near Michigan State University, that most of the victims were homeless white men, and that four of the five cases involved blunt force trauma to the face with no weapon recovered.
Backus did not dodge the fear now circulating in Lansing.
"One question that we’re being asked is, do we have a serial killer in Lansing? What we need the public to know, is we are investigating all of these cases. They are all active investigations, and we are looking at the idea or the possibility that these may be related cases."
That acknowledgment puts law-and-order pressure squarely on local leadership. Residents using a public trail expect basic safety. When multiple men turn up beaten or stabbed in the same corridor, the city owes them answers and a visible response.
The Daily Mail reported the sequence of discoveries police are now reviewing together.
On October 14, 2025, around 7:35 a.m., officers responded to a call about an injured person in the 300 block of East Oakland Avenue. Gino Chouinard, 54, was found with injuries to his face and taken to a hospital. He was pronounced dead on October 27. The medical examiner’s office listed the cause as undetermined at the time.
Months of quiet followed before the trail produced more victims in rapid succession.
On July 9, around 1:30 p.m., Denis Dunnebacke, 70, was found under the Kalamazoo Street Bridge. He was unresponsive but breathing, covered in vomit, and showed apparent facial injuries. Police treated the case as a serious assault. Hospital staff told investigators the injuries could have been medical rather than criminal. Dunnebacke was pronounced dead on July 16. The medical examiner’s office has not issued a finding while the investigation continues. A family member told the Lansing State Journal he suffered severe brain injuries and spinal fractures.
On July 13, Robert Smith, 57, was found unresponsive and bleeding from the head in the same 300 block of East Oakland Avenue where Chouinard had been discovered. He was declared dead at a local hospital on July 17. On September 17, the medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide.
Then the violence turned sharper.
Around 3:54 a.m. on August 20, Daniel Lusk, 22, was found stabbed to death under the Michigan Avenue bridge on the trail. Around 3:24 a.m. on August 30, Louis Woodruff, 57, was found with apparent facial injuries in the 200 block of East César Chávez Avenue under a bridge. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and died two days later. Police are investigating that death as a homicide.
The victims were white men ranging in age from 22 to 70. Police and reporting have described them as possibly homeless, and investigators have pointed to early-morning hours and the chance some were lying down or sleeping when they were hurt.
Chief Backus told reporters the department is not guessing in the dark.
"We look for information, we look for trends, we look for patterns and we have developed some."
He also said investigators saw the link risk right away when later cases surfaced.
"We recognized immediately from the location and some of the common factors that this was very similar to Mr. Chouinard's death."
Still, Backus drew a hard line against treating every case as the work of one person. He said police could not “move forward in an investigation” on the assumption that all the suspects were the “same.” Asked whether Edward Smith, the man charged in the Lusk stabbing, might be tied to the other deaths, Backus called it a “very challenging question to answer” and said he had to be “very cautious.” New information, he added, could bring “appropriate changes if necessary.”
That caution is proper. Charging one man for one killing is not the same as proving a serial predator. But caution is not comfort. Five deaths in one trail corridor, overlapping injury patterns, and open homicide rulings leave a public safety problem that cannot be managed with press-conference restraint alone.
Edward Smith, 23, has been arrested and charged with open murder in connection with Daniel Lusk’s death. No comparable breakthrough has been announced in the other four cases.
Backus pointed to a basic investigative handicap: surveillance coverage along the river trail is thin. He said “more cameras would help us in this scenario,” and he described the difficulty of pinning down exactly where and when the crimes were happening on the path. Lansing police have set up a tip line specifically for River Trail assaults and placed more officers in the area.
Those steps matter. A tip line and extra patrols are what a city does when it finally admits a pattern is real enough to demand resources. Cameras are not a luxury on a public trail that has already produced multiple bodies. They are basic infrastructure for a place where people walk, sleep, and get attacked before dawn.
Not every death has a final medical ruling. Chouinard’s cause was undetermined when first reviewed. Dunnebacke’s case still lacks a medical examiner finding. Robert Smith’s death is a ruled homicide. Woodruff’s death is being investigated as a homicide. Lusk was stabbed to death, and that case has a defendant in custody.
The mix leaves families and neighbors in limbo. Some cases look like blunt-force attacks on vulnerable men. One is a stabbing with a charged suspect. Police say they see common factors and have developed patterns, yet they refuse, correctly, on the evidence so far, to declare a single killer. The public hears both messages at once: these deaths may be related, and no one should assume the threat is solved.
Lansing is the state capital. A river trail running through it should not become a place where homeless men are found beaten in the face or bleeding under bridges while residents wait for the next discovery. More officers and a tip line are a start. Clearer cause-of-death findings, denser camera coverage, and aggressive follow-through on every open case are the standard the city now has to meet.
Safe streets and safe trails are not optional amenities. When five men die along the same path, the measure of local government is whether it restores order before the body count rises again.
