Lansing Police Saw a Pattern in July. A Daughter Made It Public in September.

Five men have died along the Lansing River Trail in eleven months. One of those deaths was never announced. The department says it saw similarities in July. The public heard the word “connected” for the first time in a story about a grieving daughter.

Five Men, Eleven Months

Let me tell you what I noticed first when I lined these cases up by date. The pattern did not surface through a police announcement. It surfaced because a woman who had not seen her father in fifteen years stood in front of a camera and asked a question nobody in charge had answered yet.

That is the kind of case Clutch Justice exists to track. The men who died here were living outside. The record of their deaths was scattered across a handful of short police releases, one of which never went out at all. The thread that ties them together was pulled by family.

Here is what the public record shows about each of the five cases Lansing police identified on October 2.

Backus told reporters the department believes the injuries happened overnight or in the early morning, that the men appear to have been lying down and possibly asleep, and that the way they were found suggested a pattern. Four of the five had injuries to the face or head. The fifth, Lusk, was stabbed, and his case is the only one with a charged suspect. Lansing police included him in the five. Whether his death belongs in the same pattern is a question the department has not answered.

Two of the cases sit almost on top of each other. Chouinard was found on East Oakland Avenue near Washington Avenue in October 2025. Smith was found in the 300 block of East Oakland nine months later. Woodruff was found a short walk north, in Old Town. Dunnebacke was found under the Kalamazoo Street bridge downtown.

What Police Knew, and When

The Lansing Police Department’s account of these cases, delivered in full for the first time on October 2, makes it possible to set what investigators knew against what the public was told.

When Chouinard died in October 2025, police described his death as suspicious and did not release his name. The department said it was waiting on the medical examiner and working to determine whether a crime had occurred. Nearly a year later, the medical examiner has ruled his cause of death undetermined.

On July 9, officers working the trail found Dunnebacke under the Kalamazoo Street bridge, unresponsive and breathing, covered in vomit, with apparent facial injuries. The major crimes unit responded. Backus said hospital staff gave conflicting information about whether his condition was medical rather than criminal. Police investigated it as a serious assault. Dunnebacke died a week later. The department did not notify the media, and Backus explained that when medical information suggests an incident may not be criminal, the department does not regularly share it widely.

Four days after officers found Dunnebacke, police were called to the 300 block of East Oakland Avenue for a man bleeding from the head. It was Robert Smith. Backus said the department recognized immediately, from the location and other common factors, that the case looked very much like Chouinard’s. The department put out information on Smith two days later, identifying him as an assault victim. He died July 17. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide on September 18, and police announced the ruling on September 21, nine weeks after he died.

On August 20, Daniel Lusk was stabbed to death in the 300 block of East Michigan Avenue near the Lansing Center. That morning, Mayor Andy Schor issued a statement calling the stabbing a tragedy and saying the city’s parks and trail “remain safe places for our residents and visitors.” By then, Chouinard, Dunnebacke, and Smith were all dead, and the department had already connected two of their cases in its own thinking.

Ten days later, on August 30, police found Louis Woodruff in Old Town with severe injuries to his face. His family removed him from life support on September 1.

A Daughter Asked the Question

Joanna Woodruff had not seen her father in fifteen years when her aunt called on the morning of August 30. Louis Woodruff was living homeless in the Lansing area. She told WILX that her memories of the river trail were of him teaching her and her siblings to fish there, helping them cast and taking the fish off the hook when they were too scared to do it themselves. Her last memory of him now is a hospital room.

She did not stop at grief. She went on camera and asked the city why there were not more cameras on the trail if police knew this was happening, “especially at the same spot on the river trail.” She pointed out that the city was busy debating license plate reader cameras and asked what anyone was doing to protect the people on the trail.

That story is where the public first heard that Lansing police were exploring whether the deaths were connected. Police told WILX they were looking at a possible link between the two most recent homicides and had added patrols. A month later, the department was standing at a podium describing five cases, a pattern, and a tip line.

That sequence matters beyond this case. When the victims are unhoused, the usual pressure that pushes a death into the news is weaker. There may be no address for reporters to knock on, no employer, no family nearby. The press release is the record, and when the press release does not go out, the death does not exist publicly. Families who speak up are often the only check on that.

The Death That Was Never Announced

Dennis Dunnebacke was found by Lansing police officers. He was not discovered by a passerby who called it in, and he was not found days later. Officers working the trail found a 70-year-old man unresponsive under a bridge with injuries to his face, and the department’s major crimes unit came to the scene. Police investigated it as a serious assault.

The department still did not tell the public. The reason Backus gave was that hospital staff suggested the incident might be medical, and the department does not regularly release incidents it has not determined to be criminal. That standard leaves the decision to the department’s discretion, and in this case it kept a death out of view during the exact four days before a second man was found with head injuries about a mile away.

Hospitals are not investigators, and a clinician’s early guess about whether an injury is medical is not a cause-of-death finding. The medical examiner has still not issued one for Dunnebacke. The department treated him as an assault victim for purposes of its investigation and as a possible medical case for purposes of public notice. Those two positions cannot both govern the same death without the public losing the information it would need to see a pattern for itself.

The medical examiner’s timeline adds to the gap. Two of the five deaths have no determined cause. Smith’s homicide ruling came nine weeks after he died. Every week a finding is pending is a week in which the department can describe a death as undetermined, and an undetermined death does not show up in anyone’s count.

The Response So Far

Since the October 2 press conference, the department has deployed camera trailers and extra patrols along the trail and says it is exploring permanent cameras around overpasses and bridges. Backus also said the department has been working with advocacy groups to keep unhoused people off the trail during the early morning hours, and that the number of people in those areas has dropped by half.

That last measure deserves a hard look. It reduces the number of potential victims in the places where attacks have happened. It does nothing about whoever is responsible, and it moves the people at greatest risk to places that may have less light, fewer patrols, and no cameras at all. A public safety response that works by relocating the people being killed is a containment strategy, and it should be described as one.

The advice offered to everyone else has been sensible and aimed at the wrong audience. The president of the Friends of the Lansing Regional Trails has urged trail users to go out in daylight, walk with a partner, and share their location. That is good advice for a jogger. It is not advice a man sleeping under a bridge can use.

Older Trail Deaths Clutch Is Reviewing

Chief Backus said that outside these five cases, there have been no other assault-related deaths on the Lansing River Trail. Clutch Justice searched public reporting for earlier deaths and attacks along the trail to see what the record holds. None of the cases below has been connected to the 2025 and 2026 deaths by police or by anyone else. They are on Clutch’s review list because they share a location or circumstance worth checking against the records as they come out.

Why Clutch Is Tracking This in Real Time

Most of the cases Clutch Justice covers are reconstructions. By the time the records reach me, the decisions that shaped the outcome were made years ago. This one is happening now. The medical findings are still pending, the cameras have not gone up, and the department’s account is less than a week old.

That makes the questions concrete. When will the medical examiner rule on Dennis Dunnebacke? What written policy, if any, governs when Lansing police release a death to the public? Who decided Dunnebacke’s death would not be released, and was that decision revisited after Robert Smith was found four days later? What did the department tell the families of these men, and when? Those are the questions the case library will follow.

I want to be direct about why this matters to me. Families did the work here. Joanna Woodruff did not have to go on camera. She had every reason to grieve privately for a father she had lost long before he died. She asked a public question instead, and that question is why there is a press conference, a tip line, and a public count of five. Clutch Justice will keep the record she started.