A family is hoping others learn from a tragedy that has left two people in the hospital with potentially life-changing injuries.
Stephanie and Michael Quigley were scheduled to go to court on Wednesday. She had filed for divorce, asking the court for full custody of their four children and a Personal Protection Order - saying she was afraid of her husband.
The court hearing never happened. On Tuesday night investigators say Michael showed up at the apartment of Stephanie’s friend Ryan Sharp, a single dad she babysat for. He shot them both in the head.
For more than twenty hours, investigators searched for Michael Quigley until an Ortonville man noticed the windows fogged up on his parked van. He soon found Quigley hiding in his van.
Quigley was taken to the Oakland County Jail, where he is on suicide watch. He is expected to be arraigned as soon as Friday.
Ryan and Stephanie are in the hospital in stable condition. A bullet hit Ryan in the eye and Stephanie in the back of the head. At first, the mom of four was partially paralyzed.
Ryan Sharp's family declined the opportunity to speak during this tough time. Stephanie's family says the community support has been overwhelming.
“Stephanie is recovering well. The update from this morning is she is getting back a lot of her coordination and her speech, but she has a long road ahead of her,” said Michael Barrett, Stephanie’s cousin.
He says her four children are going to need a lot of help as she recovers. The family has set up a GoFundMe account to help her care for the children and herself.
“So all the support she can get financially, as well as continued prayer is going to help the whole family,” said Barrett.
Barrett says the family hopes others learn from this. They say though Michael and Stephanie Quigley’s once loving relationship deteriorated— as he became addicted to drugs.
They know he was addicted to prescription opiates he had been prescribed and also bought off the street. He says it is possible he was using other illegal drugs.
“When someone is struggling with a drug addiction and they are trying to do their best to overcome it, but they are losing the battle and it continues to go downhill, it creates a chain of events of actions that happen that totally destroy a family,” said Barrett. “I can’t encourage those enough that have that going on in their family to address those real serious issues that only go and get worse and worse and worse. And then something like this happens.”
If you would like to contribute to the GoFundMe account set up for Stephanie and her children, you can find it here.
