Update: Man shot in head in Pittsfield Township is upgraded to stable condition

With a power outage Monday night affecting the Pittsfield Township apartment complex where Katris Perry lives, she knew there wasn’t much more to do than sit inside by candlelight.

As she and her father were in his apartment talking, a soft knock sounded at the door just after 11 p.m.

Perry’s father, Michael Harris, opened the door to find his downstairs neighbor standing in the hallway, shirtless, with a blood-filled rag pressed against his head. Words seemed to escape the man, who was suffering from what Perry realized must be a serious injury.

“He was telling me, ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ but that was it,” Perry said. “He couldn’t talk at all, he was just pointing.“

Pittsfield Township police investigate a shooting at Evergreen Apartments.

Harris led the man to a cement walkway outside as Perry called 911. Officers arrived minutes later and medical crews took the man away on a stretcher.

Pittsfield Township Police said the 31-year-old suffered a single gunshot wound to the left temple in an assault and shooting that occurred sometime Monday night.

Authorities believe the incident was drug-related. They are not releasing the victim's name.

Deputy Police Director Gordy Schick said two men forced their way into the man’s unit at Evergreen Apartments, hit him in the face multiple times with a handgun and shot him in the head.

The suspects remain at large.

Though investigators were able to interview the victim at a local hospital, much about what happened that night remains unclear.

The severity of the victim's injuries has made it difficult for him to communicate, Schick said Tuesday night, and the search for details is a slow process. Perry said she and her father stood outside into the early morning hours Tuesday while police investigated the building at 3100 Woodland Hills Drive.

A power outage Monday left the complex in darkness, she said, and many residents sat outside talking for hours. Perry said she saw nothing unusual in front of the building, but did not see the shooting victim outside.

Perry and her father went back into his apartment just before 11 p.m., and electricity was restored about 15 minutes later. That’s about the time the injured neighbor came up to talk with them, she said.

“It’s probably a life-saver the power came on because there’s no telling how long he would have been down there in the dark,” she said. “It was pitch black.”

Residents on the second floor just above the victim’s apartment said they left during the outage Monday and returned around 2 a.m. to find the investigation. The building was largely empty earlier that night, they said.

Riddhima Vaya, who lives on the first floor, said she walked in through silent darkness around 10:30 p.m. and fell asleep inside her apartment. She awoke only as police knocked on her door later that night.

Perry went to visit the injured man — whom she knows only by his first name— at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital Tuesday. She wanted to know how he was doing.

“I just told him to hang in there and worry about getting better,” she said.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact Pittsfield Police at 734-822-4911 or the police department’s tip line at 734-822-4958.

Heidi Fenton covers police and courts for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at heidifenton@annarbor.com or 734-623-4673. You also can follow her on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's e-mail newsletters.