Overview
- Prosecutors charged Edward Joseph Smith with murder on Sept. 2 after police say surveillance tied him to the Aug. 20 stabbing death of 22-year-old Daniel Lusk.
- Police are probing five deaths of men who slept along a roughly one-mile stretch of the Lansing River Trail that began in October 2025 and clustered in July–August 2026.
- Investigators cite video of a man leaving Lusk’s scene, blood found at a public fountain and a sweatshirt allegedly matching footage recovered in the suspect’s tent as the core evidence in the Lusk case.
- Medical-examiner rulings differ and remain incomplete, and the other victims showed blunt-force head or facial trauma rather than stabbing, which has kept officials from declaring a single perpetrator.
- The city has added night patrols, temporary camera trailers and social workers on the trail while families and advocates criticize delayed public warnings and shelter or encampment policies that concentrated vulnerable people there.