Update: Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. -- The Orlando Sentinel reports that a second person with links to Michigan was also killed in Orlando. The paper reports that Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25, whose family was from North Carolina, was director of operations for a Saginaw marketing firm. He had flown to North Carolina to visit family before going to Orlando.
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From Monday Night
A Detroit-area native, psychologist Christopher "Drew Leinonen, 32, was among the 49 dead in the Orlando massacre that unfolded early Sunday morning, WXYZ reports.
The man he planned to wed, Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22, was also killed, Time magazine reports.
Leinonen, who spent elementary school and middle school years in Macomb and St. Clair Counties, moved with his mother, Christine Leinonen, to Florida in the 1990s while he was a teen, WXYZ says. Leinonen lived in Orlando. His father, Mark Bando, is a retired Detroit police officer.
The families want the two to be side-by-side when loved ones bid farewell, Guerrero’s father tells Times.
“I think my son wanted to do that. That’s why,” says Juan Ramon Guerrero, 61. “I don’t care what the people think. I don’t care.”
The couple lived together and had been dating for nearly two years, family members said, according to Time.
“They were honestly so in love. They were soul mates. You can tell by how they looked at each other,” Aryam Guerrero, 24, the sister of Juan, told Time. “It’s a little comforting that they died together.”
“If it’s not a funeral, they were going to have a wedding together,” she added.