Gunfire, explosions ring out from shooting range steps from her home

Apr 09, 2025

IONIA TOWNSHIP — Lois LaRoe says more than two years of gunfire and explosions have left her legally deaf, suffering from PTSD, and feeling scared and abandoned by police and lawmakers.

But LaRoe, 64, who lives alone with her cat, isn't trapped in one of Michigan's most violent zip codes. Her small home is in rural Ionia Township, where she moved 18 years ago to enjoy peace and the beauty of nature.

LaRoe says she loved it there until Casey Wagner moved next door and, without having to give her notice or even fill out a form, built a private shooting range less than 100 yards away.

"My ears are so painful all the time, and when he shoots, it makes it worse," LaRoe said through tears during a recent interview.

"I don't know how they can legalize — say it's OK — with his gun range. How can they expect me to go out and do anything in my yard?"

A Free Press investigation into repeated complaints about Wagner from LaRoe and other neighbors revealed that Michigan has almost no statewide regulation of shooting ranges. What little regulation exists has been delegated to the country's most prominent gun rights organization — the National Rifle Association.

In fact, the Free Press had to pay $78 to the NRA just to find out what state law regulations actually say.

Wagner denies allegations, detailed in police reports and accounts from multiple neighbors, that he detonated homemade bombs and even used a helium balloon to send one adrift to explode over a neighboring property.

But Wagner admits to using Tannerite — a loud, powerful, but largely unregulated explosive — as a shooting target. Tannerite and similar products can be sold over the counter as mixing kits because each component is not explosive on its own.

LaRoe said Wagner, who moved next door in 2020 and built his shooting range a couple of years later, also blasts loud music from outdoor speakers and she has sometimes had to drive a couple of miles and sleep in her car, so she can get up for her cleaning job.

"I have been living in hell," she told the Free Press.

LaRoe and other neighbors have reported to police that frequent explosions on Wagner's property have frightened livestock and children.

LaRoe said she found a shell casing in her yard and points to a piece of tape over a small round hole in a window — one of several she says won't open because of damage from Wagner's explosions. She said she tries to live in only half of her home — the half that doesn't face Wagner's property.

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Greg Sipka lives several properties east of LaRoe and said his house has been literally shaken by blasts at least a dozen times. Sipka, a U.S. Army veteran, said he can only imagine what LaRoe has endured. It is "insane" that the explosions have been allowed to continue, he said.

"If you’ve never fired or heard Tannerite you can’t envision the force and noise depending on the load the shooter mixes," Sipka said in a recent email.

But to date, the Ionia sheriff and other authorities, including the township supervisor, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have given LaRoe and her neighbors no reason for optimism.

After LaRoe complained to her local lawmaker, state Rep. Gina Johnsen, R-Odessa Township, Johnsen said she offered and sought financial assistance for LaRoe to repair her windows, organized a meeting to try to mediate the dispute, and even told LaRoe she could spend the night in her home. LaRoe said Johnsen was sympathetic and helped pay for one of her medical appointments.

But Johnsen confirmed that when mediation fell through, she told LaRoe she should consider selling her home and told her she even had a prospective buyer in mind.

When initial approaches didn't work, "other options" needed to be explored, said Johnsen, who wouldn't identify the potential buyer.

She didn't respond to an email asking whether she thinks state law needs to be strengthened.

Like many townships, Ionia Township has no zoning, which can be used to prohibit the firing of weapons in residential areas.

It also has no noise ordinance.

The township does have a disorderly conduct ordinance from 1996, which makes disturbing the public peace with "loud or boisterous conduct," or by creating "a noise or racket in a public place or from private property," a 90-day misdemeanor.

But Ionia County Sheriff Charlie Noll said deputies would have to catch Wagner in the act in order to enforce it.

Instead, there are loud booms, police are called, and by the time they arrive, the explosions have stopped.

The only state law related to shooting ranges, passed in 1989, was mostly intended to exempt existing gun ranges from newly enacted noise and nuisance ordinances, as well as criminal and civil liability, as urban residents migrated to rural areas and voiced complaints.

The Sport Shooting Ranges Act doesn't distinguish between private and commercial shooting ranges and doesn't require any notice, permit, or registration to establish a range. Though it allows local governments to regulate ranges, it doesn't require them to do so. The only state law requirement is that ranges "conform to generally accepted operation practices" established by a nonprofit group identified by the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor.

The commission, most recently in March 2019, adopted rules set out in a 2012 NRA publication, the "Range Source Book," but did not publish those requirements. It also hasn't reviewed those rules since, even though state law says it is supposed to do so at least every five years and the NRA manual has since been updated, in 2023.

Asked to provide a copy of the NRA guidelines, DNR spokesman Ed Golder said the department doesn't have them and he couldn't find them online, except for a link to purchase them, which the Free Press did.

"Sound decreases over distance," the book says. "If planning a new range, try to locate the facility as far as practical from other activities."

To absorb sound, the NRA recommends that outdoor ranges include eight-foot berms, which Wagner doesn't have.

But much is missing from the guidelines, such as a recommended minimum distance between the point where shots are fired and the nearest adjacent residence.

What's more, while the Michigan statute says firing ranges must conform to whichever practices are adopted, the Michigan Natural Resources Commission says the NRA manual "is advisory and should be considered guidelines rather than absolute requirements."

In a 2014 opinion, the Michigan Supreme Court said failure to comply with every provision of the NRA manual does not mean a shooting range is out of compliance with state law — even though the guidelines are the only state restrictions that exist.

At least one neighboring state has a much more restrictive law. In Illinois, all shooting at ranges developed since 1994 must take place at least 1,000 yards away from any adjacent home. That's about 10 times further away than Wagner is from LaRoe.

Leland Jockheck, who has lived in the area for 25 years, said it at times has been difficult to get the family dog to go outside and his grandchildren were reluctant to visit after the July 4, 2024 incident in which a balloon with a lit fuse attached floated across his property and exploded over the property next door.

He said the situation points to the need to regulate Tannerite and similar products.

"What's the difference between that and dynamite?" Jockheck asked. "Once it's activated, it's an explosive."

Sheriff Noll, former township supervisor Kurt Scheurer, and Johnsen, the state representative, all say Wagner has not been a good neighbor. But that's not necessarily against the law.

Scheurer said in December he heard the July 4 explosion from his home, three and a half miles away. That was after Scheurer thought Wagner toned it down after complaints were discussed at a December 2023 township board meeting.

"People are free to shoot their guns — that’s what it boils down to," said Scheurer, who stepped down as supervisor in January.

Though he is sympathetic to LaRoe, Scheurer said he doesn't favor the creation of a township zoning ordinance because zoning drew strong opposition when proposed a few years ago and he doesn't think it would pass.

Noll said in January he'd like to see the controversy come to an end, but "it's all on Casey" to make that happen.

"It's an unfortunate situation with close neighbors around," he said. "He has his right to shoot guns and unfortunately, if he wants to blow up some Tannerite once in a while, he has that right as well."

Not satisfied with police responses, LaRoe and Sipka met in late March with Ionia County Prosecutor Kyle Butler.

"I have been brought up to speed on the situation and it is being looked into," Butler told the Free Press April 1.

Wagner is a sergeant at Ionia's Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility, where he supervises the state prison's arsenal of firearms and ammunition, according to an April 2024 police report. His cluttered property is surrounded by surveillance cameras and, according to another incident report, he monitors a police scanner.

Wagner told the Free Press in December he sometimes likes to use Tannerite for range practice because the boom it produces lets him know when he's hit his target.

The DNR has banned the use of Tannerite or any other explosive as a target at all designated state game areas and wildlife areas since 2016.

Jenni Riehle, a spokeswoman for the MDOC, didn't respond to emailed questions about whether the department expects its firearms experts to be more responsible gun owners than Wagner's neighbors say he has been.

Wagner said he's tried to be friendly and helpful with LaRoe and doesn't know why she keeps making complaints against him. He said he doesn't play music after 8 p.m., sets the volume only at about 50% of full blast, usually uses only a .22-caliber rifle, and only fires his guns in the evening if an animal is threatening his livestock.

"Her hearing is better than mine," Wagner said of LaRoe, when told she has medical records documenting damage to her ears since he moved in.

Though there have been periodic lulls in the explosions, complaints to the police have increased in recent months. LaRoe said Wagner fires high-caliber weapons, has shifted the firing line even closer to her home, and continues to play loud concert music for hours.

Though LaRoe believes he is trying to get her to move, Wagner said in December he has no interest in buying her property.

Wagner did not return phone messages left March 28 and March 31.

Until something changes, "they let me live here, in the torture," LaRoe said. "You have no idea what it feels like."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected].