KENT COUNTY, MI -- A Comstock Park-area couple this week are left making plans to essentially start over after their home was not only damaged by flood water from the swollen Grand River, but also destroyed by a looter late last week.

“Everything was flood-ready,” said Bruce Ling, speaking of his riverside home on Abrigador Trail, days before the river crested.

He’s dealing with a different situation now. “My wife almost died and our home was destroyed.”

The alleged culprit: their neighbor.

Mark Scott Vandermolen, 36, is accused of firing a handgun from his property toward Ling's wife, then trashing the Lings' house after they evacuated during the flooding.

He was arraigned Monday on charges of felonious assault, third-degree home invasion and malicious destruction of property.

The trouble erupted in the early evening of April 18.

Bruce and his wife, Rebecca Ling, stacked many of their belongings that day on milk crates inside their single-story home. They had dealt with flooding before, given the location of their home right along the river. This time, after speaking with a friend at the National Weather Service, Bruce Ling had a feeling things could be much worse.

They prepared to evacuate.

As Bruce Ling returned home Thursday afternoon from taking a load of clothes to a neighbor’s cottage on higher ground, he found his wife on the phone with police.

She looked shell-shocked and was "white as a sheet," Ling said, recalling their conversation.

Rebecca Ling had been walking out toward the river near their home, removing some plants to bring them away from the water, and was on their porch when she turned around and saw her neighbor — a man with whom they have struggled for years — pointing a gun right at her, Bruce Ling said.

He fired three shots, Bruce Ling said, none of which hit his wife.

A Kent County sheriff's detective, in a court affidavit, recounted what Rebecca Ling told him.

"According to Mrs. Ling, the defendant had in his possession a silver handgun and fired multiple shots at her. Mrs. Ling had to duck around the corner of the house, in fear she was going to be shot," the detective wrote.



The gunfire was enough to leave her in fear.

After talking with police, the couple packed up and took off to stay elsewhere until the river began to recede.

Around 7:30 Friday morning, only hours after they left, Bruce Ling received a call from the daughter of a neighbor along Abrigador Trail. It’s one he says he won’t forget.

Window’s on the Ling home were shattered, he learned. Something wasn’t right.

Ling pulled up in a boat that day — pushing through water flooding into the street outside — and found not only his windows were shattered, but nearly everything else, too.

A set of 19th-century china was toppled over into water rising on the floor inside.

Cabinet doors had been ripped off. Appliances were scattered haphazardly in the water. A toilet and sink appeared to have been pulled off the wall and shattered. A file cabinet poked through a slider window, also shattered.

The Lings’ pontoon boat had been cut from a line anchoring it near their home and was floating out in the river with their dock.

A box of jewelry Rebecca Ling left on top of the refrigerator is missing.

Police found blood in the Lings' home and discovered that Vandermolen had a significant laceration to his right hand when they first spoke with him. He was taken to the hospital for the cut and treatment of hypothermia, said Kent County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Jack Smith.

Smith said the inside of the Lings' home appeared "destroyed." Shots had been fired inside the house, he said.

Vandermolen could not be reached Wednesday. A relative in Newaygo County said he would not want to comment.

The couple have feuded with Vandermolen for several years, Bruce Ling said.

Court records hint at the strained relationship.

"The victim and the defendant have quite a history of violence," the detective wrote in the affidavit.

The Lings filed a personal protection order against Vandermolen in November 2010 and received an extension on the order the following year.

“We need some justice here,” Bruce Ling said.

For now, the couple has a place to stay in Grand Rapids as they wait for flood waters to recede. They’ll head inside to see what is salvageable once it’s safe to enter again, Bruce Ling said.

He’s thankful for an outpouring of support from the community, including many who know him and his wife — both musicians — for their involvement with the local music scene.

The support, Ling said, is beyond what he could have imagined.