On March 11, 1997, a shooting spree took place in Detroit, Michigan, when 21-year-old Allen Lane Griffin Jr. killed three people and wounded two others with a 12-gauge pump shotgun before being fatally shot by police.

[2] The shooting spree began just before 10:00 a.m. when Griffin left his home in Detroit, Michigan, and walked down the road toward Denby High School.

On his way, he encountered 23-year-old Eric Skalnek, a police recruit applicant, near the entrance to the school's outdoor track.

Skalnek had been on a morning jog when he spotted Griffin, dressed in a camouflage jacket, baseball cap, jeans, and tennis shoes.

Griffin then ordered everyone lying on the floor to start singing the Lord's Prayer, instructing the security guard, 38-year-old Virene Brown, to lead them.

[1][4] As people lay on the floor, Griffin walked over to 25-year-old James Isom, an employee of the bank, and fatally shot him in the head.

Griffin then entered a back office and killed the bank manager, 52-year-old Stanley Pijanowski III.

Police officers then fired multiple rounds at Griffin, killing him and ending the shooting spree.

Griffin was supposedly despondent over a failed marriage with his wife who had filed for divorce not long before the shootings.

[7] More than a day after the shooting spree, a maintenance worker entered the boiler room in the bank's basement and found Brown still hiding down there.

Lawyers for some of the victims claim the shootings were prompted by an alleged sex-for-money gay relationship between Griffin and Pijanowski.

A week prior to the shootings, Griffin had told his mother that he did not have anything worth living for and that he wanted to die.