More than three dozen people were killed at the hands of others in a three-county region of Michigan last year, marking an 85% jump over 2023.

In total, 37 people were killed in Saginaw, Bay, and Midland counties, with the majority in the city of Saginaw, where 23 lost their lives in 2024, according to MLive.

Victims in Saginaw included two 15-year-old boys, six men killed at stores, another gunned down at a library, and two men killed by gunfire at the same apartment complex. Another two were vehicular assaults.

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Out of the 23 Saginaw homicides, police have arrested and charged 16 suspects involved in 14 of the killings, according to the news site.

The nearly two dozen homicides in Saginaw compares to just 14 the year prior, and 19 in 2022 and 2021.

An additional nine homicides occurred in Saginaw County outside of the city limits, including the line-of-duty death of Michigan State Police Trooper Joel E. Popp on Jan. 24, when he was allegedly struck by a drunken driver during a traffic stop.

In Bay City, there were three homicides in 2024, following a 2023 with none. They involved a still unresolved murder of a 28-year-old found in a vacant lot in June, the alleged murder and dismemberment of a 41-year-old man in September, and the alleged murder of a 26-year-old in September.

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Suspects face open murder charges in the latter two cases, according to MLive.

Another alleged murder occurred in a Midland home, where a 33-year-old was allegedly killed by his 28-year-old brother. There were no homicides in Midland in 2023.

All of the victims in all three counties were male, with the exception of a 56-year-old woman who was allegedly shot in her Midland County home by her 63-year-old husband, who now faces an open murder charge.

The uptick in mid-Michigan murders comes as other areas of the state, and the nation as a whole, experienced a significant decline since the pandemic ended.

“I think the scope of the decline in murder stands out,” Jeff Asher, crime analyst with AH Datalytics and creator of the Real-Time Crime Index, recently told PBS. “Right now, we have over 300 cities’ worth of data through October showing murder down 16 percent. Last year, the FBI had murder down 12 percent.”

“For some context, the largest one-year decline ever recorded prior to last year was a 9 percent decline in 1996. … It’s not just that we’re seeing murder relatively returning to where it was pre-pandemic, but we’re seeing by far the fastest one-year declines last year and then again this year.”

In Michigan more broadly, trends have been mixed in the state’s metropolitan areas, which account for the majority of homicides.

In Detroit, city officials are celebrating a decline of 49 homicides in 2024 from the year prior, with the 203 homicides last year marking the lowest point since 1965, when officials reported 188, The Associated Press reports.

“The change in this community in just a few years has been very special,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan told the news service. “These aren’t numbers. These are real people, mostly young people in our community.”

While the numbers in Detroit mark an improvement from 309 homicides in 2022, and 308 in 2021, they do not take into account the city’s dwindling population. In 1965, the city of roughly 1.59 million’s 188 homicides equated to one homicide for every 8,457 residents.

The 203 homicides in 2024, when the city’s residents numbered roughly 633,000, equates to one homicide for every 3,118 residents, or more than double the rate in 1965.

In Grand Rapids, the state’s second largest city, murders are down 31.3% when comparing data from January to October to the same time frame in 2023, according to Asher’s Real-Time Crime Index.

There were 11 murders in Grand Rapids through September, compared to 16 in 2023. Yet when examined based on a 12-month rolling sum, the 18 in Grand Rapids leading up to October 2024 is six times higher than the three murders in the 12-months prior to November 2020.

Other Michigan cities with increases in reported murders through the third quarter of 2024 include a 200% jump in Canton Township, a 9.1% increase in Flint, a 14.3% increase in Lansing, a 200% increase in Westland, and a 50% increase in Wyoming, according to the crime index.