Copley shooter Michael Hance was eccentric, but also helpful to neighbors in Akron

By John Caniglia - The Plain Dealer

August 9, 2011

AKRON, Ohio -- Residents of Minota Avenue weren't likely to forget their neighbor Mike Hance even before Sunday.

The 51-year-old who hunted down and shot to death seven people and wounded his longtime girlfriend during a 10-minute rampage in Copley Township was eccentric in ways hard to ignore.

Some said he was just a quiet guy. Others called him an oddball.

"He was strange," said Ralph Petz, a neighbor who has lived across the street for years and was friendly with him.

Neighbors and people who knew Hance said he had compulsions that may have hinted at shades of mental illness.

He would place a kayak in the driveway and pretend to paddle. He would stock up on herbs and roots from a local health food store and make concoctions that would have him buzzing around. Once, he repeatedly dug up his small yard with a Rototiller only to leave it without planting grass.

After the shootings Sunday, neighbors saw a line of police cars pulled up to the gray, two-story Minota home owned by Hance's girlfriend Becky Dieter and shared by the couple for several years. After obtaining a search warrant, police broke a window on the side door.

A neighbor said officers seized at least one computer and some type of writing Hance had been working on.

Officers stayed until about 6 p.m. and left, boarding up the house behind them. The couple spent time in both the Akron and Copley Township homes.

Copley police at a news conference Monday were not clear on what sparked the shooting.

Dieter is at a local hospital. Police have been unable to speak with her.

In late May 2009, Akron police were called to the home on Minota for some sort of crisis intervention for a man with apparent mental health issues, but no report was made, police said.

Hance did not have a criminal record. His only other documented interaction with police occurred in 1997 in Akron, where he lived for years. He confronted an intoxicated neighbor who messed with his truck. He told police the man threatened him with a gun.

But some say he may have had mounting stress in his life. He had helped care for Dieter's ailing father, who had dementia. And he was unemployed after he lost his job when a copy store in Akron closed.

Dieter, his girlfriend of more than 20 years, mostly stayed at her parents' home on Goodenough Road in Copley Township, a house that she and Hance were supposed to be fixing up for sale, friends and neighbors there said. They said Hance had a tense relationship with next-door neighbors Russell and Gudrun "" Johnson, who didn't like the disrepair the Dieter's house was falling into or the odd hours of the night that Hance would be up working loudly on his truck.

The two homes were only separated by a gravel driveway.

Sandy Haught, another neighbor on Minota, said Hance told her that he didn't like living in Copley.

But he appeared to love Dieter.

Often, Haught said, they would see him follow her down the street in his robe as she drove off to work, blowing kisses to her.

Robin Hancock, who said she worked alongside Hance as a caregiver for Dieter's parents, the mother, Helen, who died in 2008, and father Wayne, who died the following year, said he was obsessive about his health and would frequent the Mustard Seed Market in Akron where he would stock up on health items. She said he would also carry around stacks of books and was ready to launch into a lecture on whatever current topic he was fixated on.

"He seemed to always be busy with something but never got anything done," Hancock said.

She said her quarrels with Hance and the mood he brought to the Dieter home caused her to quit as a caregiver several months before Wayne Dieter died in 2009. Hancock said she had worked for the family for more than three years.

Hance's parents both died in 2006 and their small estate was split evenly between Hance and a sister, who lives in Mogadore, according to the lawyer who handled the estate. She declined to talk to a reporter Monday.

Cliff Woodruff, who graduated with Hance from Norton High School in 1978 said he remembers his classmate as tall and quiet, but very sweet-natured.

Hance was even voted the "most courteous" guy at the school. The yearbook shows him opening the door for another student.

And shades of that helpful Mike Hance still seemed to exist on Minota.

Hance helped his fellow neighbors with cars stuck in the snow and dead engines.

Once he ran out in freezing weather wearing only a bathrobe to help Petz push his car out of a drift.

Hance was out often, mostly fixing pickups that he parked in the driveway and backyard.

Hance's next door neighbor, Daryl McCraney, said he was stunned by the shooting.

He said Hance often helped him with an engine in the middle of winter.

"He was just a regular old neighbor," McCraney said.

Petz said he saw Hance for the last time Thursday doing yard work. He said Hance appeared to have a faraway look on his face while he wore some type of a helmet to protect his face.

Woodruff said when word spread among graduates of Norton -- just a short hop from Copley -- that the killer was one of their classmates, nobody thought of Hance as the likely shooter.

"He was just one of those people, it might sound clich but he was just friendly," Woodruff said. "But something sure changed, I guess."