A man fatally shot his wife and their six children, then himself, before they all were found in their burning Michigan home last week, investigators said Monday.
Kristopher and Amanda Karolkiewicz and their six children, aged 5 to 15, died Friday in their home in Grand Haven Township, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Authorities were summoned for a fire and then discovered the bodies.
Click to Gallery
Law enforcement officials investigate the scene of a fatal house fire on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Grand Haven Township, Mich. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
Community members gather during a student-organized vigil at Duncan Woods in Grand Haven, Mich. on Sunday, July 26, 2026, to grieve and honor eight members of a local family who died in a tragedy that has stunned the lakeshore community. (Isaac Ritchey /The Grand Rapids Press via AP)
Community members gather during a student-organized vigil at Duncan Woods in Grand Haven, Mich. on Sunday, July 26, 2026, to grieve and honor eight members of a local family who died in a tragedy that has stunned the lakeshore community. (Isaac Ritchey/The Grand Rapids Press via AP)
Law enforcement officials gather to investigate a fatal house fire on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Grand Haven Township, Mich. Ottawa County Sheriff's Office said six children and two adults were found dead in a "suspicious" house fire. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
The Ottawa County Sheriff's Department said in a release Monday that autopsies determined all the family members died of gunshot wounds, and that Kristopher Karolkiewicz took his own life.
“The investigation shows that this was a murder-suicide,” Capt. Jacob Sparks wrote.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
The fire appears to have been set intentionally in multiple parts of the home after the killings, but officials still are investigating the origin point, Sparks said. The family's pets perished in the blaze.
Messages seeking comment were sent Monday to the couple's relatives.
Kris Karolkiewicz was 47; his wife, who went by Mandy, was 39.
The couple met at work at a beverage company in 2008 and began dating that summer, according to a parenting-oriented blog that Mandy Karolkiewicz kept over a decade ago.
Their first child was born on April 25, 2011, which she hailed as “the best day of my life (so far).” Two more sons followed over the next four years, as she shifted from a banking job to a part-time position at a local insurance agency and later stopped working outside the home. The couple was planning to adopt more children at the time.
The blog frequently expressed her Christian faith, her joy in the family and her love and appreciation for her husband and his parenting. “My kids have that actual example of a selfless, Christ-like father,” she wrote in 2015.
Kris Karolkiewicz, too, hailed their life together: “I’m a very lucky guy,” he wrote in a 2019 Facebook post ahead of their 10th anniversary.
Kris Karolkiewicz was a vice president of sales and marketing for the American Heart Association from September 2023 to earlier this month, when his employment ended, an organization spokesperson said. The association did not release further details, saying it does not comment on personnel matters. While with the AHA, he worked remotely for a division responsible for CPR and first aid training and products, it said.
Recently, Mandy Karolkiewicz was a substitute teacher at an elementary school, earning praise for going “above and beyond for students, especially when they’re having a hard day, responding with empathy, patience, and care,” as the local school district put it in a Facebook post in January. A message seeking comment was sent Monday to the Grand Haven Area Public Schools system, which — without identifying anyone — exhorted the public in a post Friday to “avoid speculation” about the deaths.
Although her blog ended in 2016, Mandy Karolkiewicz continued sharing updates on her family and activities in TikTok videos, including clips of a trip to China earlier this month with two of her children.
Peltz reported from New York and Collins from Hartford, Conn.
Law enforcement officials investigate the scene of a fatal house fire on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Grand Haven Township, Mich. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
Community members gather during a student-organized vigil at Duncan Woods in Grand Haven, Mich. on Sunday, July 26, 2026, to grieve and honor eight members of a local family who died in a tragedy that has stunned the lakeshore community. (Isaac Ritchey /The Grand Rapids Press via AP)
Community members gather during a student-organized vigil at Duncan Woods in Grand Haven, Mich. on Sunday, July 26, 2026, to grieve and honor eight members of a local family who died in a tragedy that has stunned the lakeshore community. (Isaac Ritchey/The Grand Rapids Press via AP)
Law enforcement officials gather to investigate a fatal house fire on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Grand Haven Township, Mich. Ottawa County Sheriff's Office said six children and two adults were found dead in a "suspicious" house fire. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP)
LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron urged fire crews to “stay strong” as they battled Monday to bring a monster wildfire under control, warning that the fight will take time but vowing, “We will win this battle together.”
On a visit to a coordination center for the massive firefighting effort in southwest France, Macron heard how the blaze raging since last week has been wildly unpredictable, transforming at times into a self-feeding fire storm as it burned through an area four times the size of Paris and forced 220,000 people to flee their homes.
“We're facing a completely unprecedented fire,” Macron said, describing the situation as France's worst fire-related crisis since World War II.
He praised firefighting teams who stopped the inferno's progression Monday after successive days of spreading flames. But with woodlands still smoldering, he cautioned that the battle isn’t yet won.
“The weeks ahead will be hard,” he said.
With thousands of firefighters on the ground and rotations of water- and retardant-dropping aircraft, it became a race against time Monday before an expected heat wave that could make fighting flames more difficult. The national weather service forecast temperatures above 35 C (95 F) in the southwest on Tuesday and likely higher on Wednesday.
Regional authorities said the situation overnight to Monday had remained “globally stable” — a change from previous days when officials said flames had crept to within 15 kilometers (10 miles) of the outskirts of Bordeaux, a historic city of 268,000 people, and generated self-feeding firestorms with lightning bolts that ignited more blazes.
No new evacuations were announced Monday. But with France about to enter its peak August tourist season, authorities for the Gironde region around Bordeaux worked to keep vacationers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities.
Crews using earth movers tore up strips of forest and scrubland to create barren spaces, intended to stop fires from spreading. Farmers were keeping fire crews supplied with water, transporting it to them in tanks.
Around a dozen countries have provided planes, helicopters, firefighters and other assistance to both France and Spain, which is also fighting unprecedented blazes. All told, fires in the two countries have forced more than 330,000 people to flee.
In Spain, wildfires have burned out of control around Madrid and in the Valencia region. Authorities evacuated 79,000 people and confined 30,000 others to their homes.
In both Spain and France, the exceptional scale of the fires — fueled by heat waves that hit especially hard and early this year, making forests and scrubland tinder-dry — are driving calls for stronger action against climate change.
“What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the consequence of a climate emergency that is making wildfires even more violent, heat waves more frequent,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.
A fire raging in hilly, rural terrain in Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, scorching 500 square kilometers (193 square miles), the government said. That's five times the size of Barcelona.
“Look at how the valley is burned. Look at the houses, the people," said David Gonzalez, a 48-year-old gardener who used his van to run supplies to firefighters in Ávila.
"We are feeling lot of anger and helplessness. It’s something inhuman,” he said.
Fires have burned 1,530 square kilometers (590 square miles) this year in Spain — six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of 2025, said Sara Aagesen, the ecology minister.
The minister said that another heat wave forecast from Tuesday — which would be Spain’s fourth so far this year — could ratchet up the fire danger. Spain’s weather agency forecast temperatures above 40 C (104 F).
A wildfire driven by strong winds broke out on Sunday afternoon near Peschici, in Italy’s southern Puglia region, burning pine forest and scrub and forcing the evacuation of about 300 tourists from beaches and campgrounds, authorities said.
The Coast Guard evacuated tourists by sea to nearby Vieste, where authorities opened temporary shelters.
Three Canadair water-bombing planes and fire crews on the ground continued Monday to battle the blaze, which revived memories of devastating wildfires that hit the same coastal area in 2007.
Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Iain Sullivan in El Tiemblo, Spain, and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed.
Firefighters suppress a blaze in a forest as wildfires rage near Le Las, outside Bordeaux, France, Monday, July 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
Firefighters tackle a blaze as wildfires rage near Le Las, outside Bordeaux, France, Monday, July 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
A De Havilland Canada DHC-8-400 Dash 8 operated by the French civil defense agency drops fire retardant as wildfires rage near Marcheprime, outside Bordeaux, France, Monday, July 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
Firefighters battle a wildfire in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of Madrid, Spain, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
A firefighter gestures next to burning trees as a wildfire rages near Marcheprime, outside, Bordeaux, France, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
Firefighters battle a wildfire near Marcheprime, outside, Bordeaux, France, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
Firefighters battle a wildfire near Marcheprime, outside, Bordeaux, France, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
A woman caresses her pet dog at an emergency shelter set up in the Bordeaux Exhibition Centre in Bordeaux, France, for those that had to leave their homes outside town due to the raging wildfires, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Caroline Blumberg)
A fire engine drives through smoke of a wildfire raging near Marcheprime, outside, Bordeaux, France, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
