Written by Tanya Terry
A $2,500 reward is being offered for tips received through Crime Stoppers that help lead to a felony arrest regarding the shooting and killing of a 44-year-old man who was shot in killed on Flint’s northeast side.
Darryl Van Stade traveled from the Grayling area to Flint to meet an unknown person on Friday, March 20, 2020. At around 9:30 p.m., Stade was shot and killed at the Kearsley Park pavilion, located at 1700 Kearsley Park Blvd.
Stade was traveling with other passengers, all of whom were uninjured.
Stade had six biological children. Stade also had five grandchildren.
Stade’s daughter, Mandy Stade, talked to the Courier about her dad. She described him as a “jack of all trades.”
“He was a good dad,” Mandy Stade said. “He made a lot of mistakes-more so towards the end of his life. But no matter his mistakes he always tried to pick up where he was failing. As for being a grandfather, he was an amazing grandfather. He only met four of my children out of my five. But I could have trusted him if I had to fly across the country to be with my children.”
Darryl Van Stade liked to walk and run.
“He liked to goof a lot,” Mandy Stade added. “Everything had to be some form of a joke at all times, no matter how serious the situation. He liked to just be alone. But when he wanted to be around people, he was around people.”
Mandy Stade was not aware her dad was traveling to Flint.
“Around 1 o’clock that morning I had went to bed, and at a little after 3 a.m., my husband was waking me up and telling me there were police officers at my house for my dad. I kept telling my husband to tell them that my dad wasn’t there. ‘Go elsewhere and look for him. He’s not here. I don’t know what they want from me.’ My husband was very strangely persistent on getting me out of bed. I remember walking down my hallway to state police officers standing in my kitchen with their hats off and their hands crossed in front of them. They asked me if I was Darryl Stade’s daughter, and I said ‘yes, I am. Why? He’s not here.’ They kept repeatedly trying to get me to sit down, and I very rudely was telling them I wasn’t sitting down. I kept telling them he wasn’t there. They kind of looked at my husband. I think my husband didn’t necessarily know why they were there because they wouldn’t disclose anything to him without me coming out of my bedroom. But it’s like my husband knew at the same time-just with the way that their demeanor was and how they were acting.”
The officers and her husband continued asking Mandy Stade to sit down.
“I kept telling them ‘no’ and that whatever they needed to spit out, they could just spit out. The one officer bowed his head as the other one looked at me and told me that my father, around roughly five hours ago, was shot and killed in Flint, Michigan.”
Mandy Stade told the officer he was lying. While her husband uncontrollably held back tears, she uncontrollably started laughing. She asked the officer how he knew it was him. The officer told her he knew this due to the identification on his personal belongings.
“I said OK. I sat down at my kitchen table and I started uncontrollably crying, terribly crying.”
In case Mandy Stade had questions, the police officer gave her a card from the detective in Flint. He asked her to call the detective after she informed the rest of the family of the loss. Mandy Stade had to call her dad’s mother and father, as well as other family members.
Mandy Stade said she was later diagnosed with severe PTSD.
Mandy Stade stated any tips that lead to an arrest will help give the family some closure. But, she said, even that will never take the pain away.
“It’s never going to take the pain away of my dad not being able to walk my sister down the aisle one day, or him never seeing his parents again, or seeing me again, or meeting my daughter that he never got to meet. It’s not going to bring him back.”
Mandy Stade said she “doesn’t know how someone can know something and not say something.”
“I just wish that somebody would say something, give something, do something.”
Darryl Stade Sr. also talked to the Courier about losing his son.
“He was a good son,” he said.
Darryl Van Stade was in the Marine Corps for eight years. He had also served on the Sheriff’s Department in North Carolina.
“I’ve had trucks all my life,” said Stade Sr. “He always helped me work on them. He was a good dad. He loved his kids. He was a good boy. He was a man, but he was always my boy.”
Stade Sr. had custody of his son and raised him since kindergarten.
“He liked to hunt. He hunted a lot during hunting season. He loved playing basketball. After he got to be a dad, he really loved spending most of his off time with his kids.”
It was Mandy Stade who broke the news to Stade Sr. about his son’s killing.
Stade Sr. walked around the driveway and kept to himself a lot after that. He had already lost another son who was only 23 due to melanoma cancer. He has had happy thoughts, been furious and been heartbroken.
Stade Sr. was in a motorcycle accident three weeks after his son’s death and was in a coma for a couple weeks. He had to have his foot amputated, and he said if his son was around, he would be helping him.
“It hurt. It hurt bad. I’d like to know the person that did it before I go to my grave. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about it.
To submit a tip anonymously, call 1-800-422-JAIL (5245), or do so at www.crimestoppersofflint.com
