Ottawa Hills Cancels Basketball Showcase Following Shooting

A shooting on campus during a basketball game has caused Ottawa Hills to cancel this weekend's "Battle of I-96" basketball tournament.

The shooting incident happened during Tuesday night's Ottawa Hills-Union game at the Southeast side school. No one was hit when the shots went off outside the gymnasium where the game was in the third period, but it frayed nerves in the wake of the Oxford High shooting near Detroit last week, that officials decided to pull the plug on the event.

The annual showcase pits schools form the east side of the state against west side schools.

In announcing the cancellation Wednesday, GRPS cited an “abundance of caution” and “recent events”, referring both to the Oxford incident, and a brawl that broke out during the Ottawa Hills-Union game prior to the shots being fired. 

Ottawa Hills, East Kentwood, Rockford, Northview and Union were the schools representing the west side in the showcase. They were slated to play schools from the Lansing, Detroit and Flint area.

Grand Rapids Police said tow people were arrested in conjunction with the fight that took place at the game, but whoever fired the shots has yet to be found. The game was not finished after the brawl.

Kent County Commissioner Robert Womack told FOX 17 News that parents were in a panic following the shooting, mainly because of last week's shooting in Oxford that claimed the lives of four students.

“One of the things we have to do is understand the root causes and get to the root causes of this,” Womack said. “And also understand that we have a lot of young men in this community with guns and we have to do something about that. That has to be addressed.”