The city was only 45 minutes away from going without a murder for a full week when someone was killed Wednesday, Detroit News editorial page chief Nolan Finley writes. He notes that Police Chief James Craig has made reducing homicides a top priority:

I ran into Police Chief James Craig downtown Wednesday. He was counting the minutes down to midnight, when, if there had been no homicides in the city, it would have marked one full week without a murder in Detroit.

That’s no small thing in a city that averages roughly six homicides a week.

But the chief was to be disappointed. At 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, two motorists got into a shootout on I-94 on the east side, leaving one of them dead.

“We almost made it,” Craig said. “All we needed was 45 minutes. We’ll start over.”