Three people including a child were left dead in what is believed to be a murder-suicide, the Portage Department of Public Safety said around 5 in the morning on August 31, 2022. 

The incident left a man, a woman in her early 30s and a 6-year-old dead, said the police. Their names have not been released to the public yet. There were three more children in the home where the alleged murder-suicide occurred, but they made it out when the shooting happened, the police department told Wood TV. 

Also Read: Colorado teen fatally shot while making TikTok video, 3 people charged

Where is Portage?

Portage is a city in the Kalamazoo county in the state of Michigan. In the county, it is the smaller of the two, beaten out by the city of Kalamazoo. 

The state is known primarily for its pharmaceutical industry as well as its celery growing agriculture. According to the 2010 census, the city has a population of 46,292, which has likely changed since then.

The city has a size of 35.17 square miles of which 32.23 is land whereas 2.94 is water. 

When the first immigrants arrived in the 1800s, the area was inhabited by the indigenous population of the Pottawatomie Indians. Settlers in the region had initially thought that the region was unfit for agriculture, but later discovered that the land was rich and perfect for growing celery. By the 1880s, Portage came to be known as the “Celery City”.

The city’s pharmaceutical industry became more important during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the home of American pharmaceutical and biotechnology largest manufacturing faciliy, Pfizer. The facility sits on land covering 1,300 acres. Millions of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines were produced at this facility and were shipped out from the city of Portage. On February 21, 2021 President Joe Biden visited the city in order to commemorate the city’s contributions to fighting the pandemic.