Detectives believe that Uber driver Jason Dalton shot eight people, six fatally, in a string of shootings around Kalamazoo on Saturday night.
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Fifteen minutes after that, five people were shot in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Both are holding on to life.
A school administrator says he remembers the man arrested in Kalamazoo-area shootings that killed six people as an athletic kid who didn’t get into trouble.
Dalton sat expressionless Monday afternoon as he was arraigned by video in a Kalamazoo County courtroom packed with television cameras, which had gathered to broadcast the news of yet another American mass shooting.
That victim, a mother of three, is now in serious condition. According to Prosecutor Jeff Getting, he got her attention and started shooting. Another customer, an Olive Garden employee, reportedly ordered a ride from Dalton on Saturday hours after the shootings, but canceled.
Ed Davis, a member of Uber’s safety advisory board and a former police commissioner, said that even if the company had met driver candidates in person it would not be able to predict whether the driver might have a “psychotic episode”.
Kalamazoo police Det. Cory Ghiringhelli told a judge Monday that Jason Dalton “ultimately admitted” that he was the shooter after his arrest. “He just kind of kept looking at me, like, ‘Don’t you want to get to your friend’s house?’ and I’m like, ‘I want to get there alive.’…”
(CNN)For seven hours, the shooter drove from one target to another, police said, gunning down victims at random.
The Kalamazoo Gazette, however, made note of how Dalton had an interest in guns and acted erratically while driving other passengers that night.
Two other people were wounded in the attack, including a girl, 14, who was initially thought to have died.
For the past 10 years, Sally and Gary Pardo have lived across the street from Dalton’s single-family home on Douglas Street in Kalamazoo.
In a news conference Sunday, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said it didn’t appear that the victims were targeted or connected to one another in any way.
“We were driving through medians, driving through the lawn, speeding along and when we came to a stop, I jumped out the vehicle and ran away”, Mellen said. About a mile into the trip, Dalton got a phone call, and when he hung up, he began driving recklessly, blowing through stop signs and sideswiping cars, Mellen said.
The random shooting incidents began around 6 p.m. Saturday at an apartment complex.
Michigan State Police said the first shooting was reported at 5:42 p.m., after a woman was shot multiple times in an apartment complex parking lot. Hadley says Dalton has no known criminal history.
Uber is standing by its safety background checks in the wake of the shootings in MI.
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“This seems so out of sorts for him”, said husband Gary Pardo, who described Dalton as “quiet” and “nice”.
