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Today we’re stepping back to February 2016 on a sunny, unseasonably warm day in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a city nestled between Chicago & Detroit. A single Uber app ride request spiraled into a rampage that left six dead, two fighting for their lives & a community shattered. During this case, we’ll be unraveling the Uber killings; a story of chaos, courage & the thin line between normalcy & nightmare.
Many of us utilize rideshare apps to get around town when we’re traveling, being responsible after having some drinks out with friends or getting around in the city. Accepting a ride involves a delicate web of trust—a quiet, unspoken agreement between rider, driver, and the platform itself, built on assumptions of safety, reliability, and mutual accountability. It’s a modern pact rooted in convenience, yet shadowed by vulnerability, especially when you consider the fact that we never know what might be lurking inside of the mind of the person accepting your ride request.
On Saturday, February 20, 2016, 30-year-old Matt Mellon climbed into his Uber, a silver Chevy Equinox, at 4:21 pm & the first few minutes of his ride were uneventful. The night before Matt had been at a birthday party & left his car behind, so he called Uber that day so he could retrieve his car. As he went to climb into the backseat of the car, he realized the driver’s German shepherd was back there so he climbed into the front seat instead. He thought it a bit odd that the man had his dog with him, especially an intimidating dog breed like a German Shepard, but he assumed that since it was such a gorgeous afternoon, the man had likely taken his dog out for a walk before he began picking up fares. Matt later learned that the driver’s first fare of the day was a female college student who refused to get into the car because of the dog’s presence.
The driver’s demeanor was initially calm & while they safely drove along, the two made small talk. However, everything changed in an instant after the driver received an insignificant, routine phone call that came through over the bluetooth speaker.
At the time, Matt wasn’t paying much attention & couldn’t even tell if the caller was male or female, an adult or a child. However, he later learned that it had been the man’s son. The call lasted a couple of minutes as the two discussed the mundane details of what they were going to have for dinner that night. For reasons Matt will never understand, as soon as the call ended, the man punched down the gas pedal & began to blow through stop signs, dodge oncoming traffic & swerve around other cars as he drove on the wrong side of the road.
The man was flying down the road, driving well over the posted speed limit at somewhere between 75-80 mph in a residential area. He was sideswiping cars as Matt was yelling, telling him to stop, pointing out the cars he was hitting while the man calmly told him, I didn’t hit that car. What’s wrong with the way I’m driving? Meanwhile the man’s dog, Mia, was also terrified & climbed down to cower on the floor.
Matt was horrified as he begged the driver to stop the car so he could get out, but his pleas went ignored. He was sure that they were going to get into a head-on collision or crash into a house. The driver blew past Matt’s destination while Matt continued to point at random houses, hoping he would let him out of the car, telling him he was passing his friend’s house. His mind was racing & he considered hitting the guy to get him to stop. Suddenly, the driver slammed on his brakes & Matt took his opportunity to bolt out of the car as he recalled the odor of burning rubber in the air.
According to Matt’s Uber app, the driver’s name was Jason, the ride began at 4:21 pm at 718 Locust St. in Kalamazoo & ended at 4:27 pm on Iroquois Trail. The three mile ride lasted only 5 minutes & 49 seconds, yet it likely felt like a lifetime.
Matt, who works for a local Kalamazoo brewery, tumbled out of the car as a woman named Kacey Black watched in confusion as he rolled onto the sidewalk. After he told her about his harrowing experience, Kacey immediately called 911, but she felt that the dispatcher wasn’t grasping the extent of what she’d just witnessed. As the call ended, she felt that she’d been blown off. Regardless, the dispatcher sent out the car’s description & its general vicinity to every on-duty officer. According to a detective, there isn’t much the police can do when someone reports an erratic driver unless they witness it themselves.
As Matt walked in the direction of his friend’s house to get his car, he also called 911 & had to tell his story three times as he was transferred to various jurisdictions. Each time he explained that he didn’t want anyone to get hurt by this crazy, unhinged driver. He also contacted Uber through the 24/7 app to report him.
When Matt called his fiance, Mackenzie Waite, she could immediately hear how shaken up he was. She decided to go on Facebook & created a post at 5:33 pm to warn area friends about the Uber driver named Jason & the post was widely shared on social media. She wrote:
Attention kzoo peeps!!! This uber driver named JASON drives a silver Chevy Equinox is NOT a safe ride!…Despite Matt pleading with this driver to pull over he refused..He was acting completely normal throughout all of this erratic driving!!…Hoping this man will be arrested or hospitalized soon if he has a medical condition causing his behavior.
Meanwhile Matt continued to try to get a hold of Uber’s response team for more than an hour. It was his goal that Uber deactivate his driver, but sadly, the man wasn’t deactivated until he went on to shoot eight innocent victims.
Matt later went on to file a lawsuit against Uber, claiming they did absolutely nothing despite the fact that the app clearly states that it had a dedicated response team on call 24/7 to investigate safety issues & things that threaten the safety of the riders. Because Matt had been unable to reach Uber reps in order to have his driver deactivated, his driver continued to remain active on the app, allowing him to pick up more riders.
Little did anyone know at the time, but after Matt escaped from the car, his driver, 45-year-old Jason Dalton, sped home. After he went inside & drank a glass of water, he went down to his basement & filled up the magazines of his guns. By the time he left his house, he was armed with a loaded Glock 9-mm semi-automatic pistol while he donned a bulletproof vest under his jacket.
Investigators came to learn that the man was completely average & unassuming prior to this horrific day. He was a suburban husband & father who had a 9 to 5 job. After he was born in Indiana, he relocated to Kalamazoo during high school & went on to be the co-captain of his football team.
Meanwhile, Dalton called Carole, his wife of 20 years, & told her that he needed to swap cars since his was damaged. He explained that he would have to drive the Hummer they owned & asked her to meet him at his parent’s house with the keys. The car was parked at his parent’s house while they were away for the winter in Florida. When Dalton called her phone, their son answered & at the time, she & the kids were standing in the parking lot of Sam’s Club. When he relayed the message to his mom, Carole said she would meet him at his parent’s house so she could give him the keys.
However, rather than driving to the house as arranged, Dalton accepted a new fare.
This time the ride was for 18-year-old high school senior, DeAllen Blackburn, who lives in the Meadows townhomes in northeast Kalamazoo. That Saturday, he’d been outside much of the day until his girlfriend, 15-year-old Maci, messaged him & asked him if he wanted to come over to hang out at her house in downtown Kalamazoo. DeAllen agreed so Maci called an Uber to pick him up a little after 5 pm.
It turned out that Maci accidentally entered the wrong pick-up location for DeAllen & rather than entering his address, she selected the Meadows townhome’s administrative office. Soon, she received a call from the driver, Jason Dalton, who told her he was lost. She gave him directions & then heard nothing from him for about ten minutes so she began texting to clarify if he found the correct location.
Later review of surveillance video showed Dalton’s car circling around this area at 5:33 pm, but he remained unable to find DeAllen. Unaware of the situation, DeAllen’s guardian, Amy, went outside to check her mailbox when she saw Dalton driving around. She noticed how aggressive he seemed & described him as having a crazy look in his eye. As she got closer to his car to get to the mailbox, he hit the gas, nearly striking her with the car.
Meanwhile, Maci continued to text Dalton who didn’t reply. As he looped around one more time, he spotted a woman with five young children in tow, across the grass in the direction of a playground.
25-year-old Tiana Carruthers was a young mother who had just finished a workout when her daughter & some of her friends told her that they wanted to go play at another girl’s house. Tiana told the girls that was fine, but she wanted to walk them over so her daughter & four other children headed out laughing & talking together.
Tiana noticed a car speeding through the complex until it stopped right in front of her & she could hear a dog continuously barking from inside the car. Dalton rolled down his window & asked her if she was Maci & when she told him no, he drove off. It wasn’t long before he turned the car around & headed back in her direction. Still sitting behind the wheel, he took out his Glock semi-automatic & pointed it at Tiana through the driver’s side window.
In the meantime, DeAllen was standing outside, waiting for his Uber to arrive & recalls hearing gunshots that were out of sight, but somewhere nearby. Meanwhile, Maci continued to text Dalton, Are you close?
Tiana remembers the moment she realized that the man had a gun as she screamed for the children to run while she attempted to do the same. As she turned to flee, she felt a burning sensation that she described as a bee sting, initially unaware that she’d been shot. Tiana was shot a total of four times, once in the left arm, once in the right leg, the left leg & the final bullet tore through her buttocks & lodged into her liver.
When Tiana was struck with the first bullet, she tried to move, but was unable. Now a sitting duck, Dalton continued to fire additional shots, so she decided to lay still so he thought she was dead.
As Dalton sped away, he was sure that his victim was dead. Neighbors ran from their homes after hearing the sound of gunshots & found Tiana on the ground, wedged between the curb & the back wheel of a truck. She had no sensation in her legs as she told them that the man was heavyset with blue eyes & a dog in the backseat of his car. Tiana was rushed to the hospital in serious condition; both of her legs & left arm were fractured & one of the bullets still remains in her liver to this day.
Some of Dalton’s shots missed their intended target as seven bullets went into the house behind Tiana; four went through the wall & were stopped by the contents of a teenager’s closet. Three teenagers had been sitting only a few feet from where the bullets stopped, innocently playing a video game. Dalton ended up shooting fifteen rounds at this location.
911 calls came pouring through from residents of the Meadows & one of the dispatchers noted the similarity in the cars & the fact that the driver had a dog in this case as well as the earlier call that came through in regards to Matt Mellon. The dispatcher called Mellon back & he clarified that the driver’s name was Jason & he sent the photo from his Uber receipt to the dispatcher’s personal phone.
Somehow the link between the shooter & Uber driver Jason was missed despite Matt sharing this information. With Uber’s help, police could have easily located & stopped the man, instead he carried on with his destruction & violence, forever changing so many people’s lives.
After he shot Tiana four times, Dalton sped over to his parent’s house just down the road, flying through the red light of an intersection at 80 mph, sideswiping a car for the second time in two hours. During this time the Uber app somehow registered that he’d picked his passenger up & began recording his route. As a result, Maci later received a bill for $7.31 that showed Dalton circling around & driving to his parents’ house.
When he arrived, he parked his damaged Equinox in the garage & when his wife arrived a little after 6 pm, he realized the Hummer wouldn’t start so he took his parent’s black Chevy HHR that Carole had been driving. When Carole asked her husband what was going on, he said he was having trouble with the taxi people & clarified that he contacted Uber & they were going to fix it. She noticed he was acting completely out of character & paranoid as he instructed her to stay with their children inside his parent’s house & lock the doors.
When Dalton further elaborated about the taxi people, he told Carole that a taxi driver had been shooting at him. He gave his wife a loaded gun & told her that she wasn’t going to be able to go back to work & the kids wouldn’t be able to return to school. When she asked him what he was talking about, he said she would understand when she saw something on the news later that related to him.
Carole later told police that when she arrived at her in-law’s house, Dalton was in the garage, on the phone, reporting the damaged car. However, this hadn’t been the case & he was actually speaking with Maci after he called her at 6:09 pm, 30 minutes after he shot Tiana. Maci indicated that they spoke for about three minutes & the call ended with him saying, Sorry, I don’t have time for this anymore. I have better things to do & you’re just wasting my time. Her impression of the man was that he was unpleasant, sketchy & rude.
As of 2016, Jason & Carole Dalton had been living in the suburbs of Kalamazoo for the past seventeen years. Neighbors described Dalton as a talker & a ten minute conversation could easily stretch to forty minutes. He was also known to fire guns out back on his property.
After he left his parent’s house, Dalton headed back home & a neighbor’s daughter recalled that he pulled in at about 7 pm. After the car idled in the driveway for a few minutes, it sped down the driveway, stopped for thirty seconds & reversed back up the driveway, then parked for five more minutes with the lights still on.
The Glock he used to shoot Tiana was later found by police officers jammed & sitting on his workbench. He’d gone home to pick up a replacement, a Walther P99 9-mm semi-automatic.
After he left his house, he once again began taking Uber fares. The passengers he drove around during this period of time noticed nothing strange about his behavior. He picked Keith Black up at his home at 8:02 pm near the Western Michigan campus & drove him to the center of town. Keith sat in the front passenger seat & chatted with Dalton as they drove. Another passenger in the 8 o’clock hour recalled Dalton singing along to the radio. At 9:21 pm he picked up a fare at the Fairfield Inn, drove to the Cracker Barrel & took three passengers to the Beer Exchange. Because he couldn’t get his app to start, the fare wasn’t properly charged, something he didn’t seem upset about.
In the meantime, 17-year-old Tyler Smith had spent much of his Saturday looking for a car with his girlfriend of nine months, 17-year-old Alexis Cornish. As the day wore into evening, Tyler’s dad, Rich, who was a plumber, came out to give his input since both he & his son had a love of cars. They were also on the lookout for something that could be used for the business they planned to start together. Rich was described as the life of the party & he & his son were exceptionally close while Tyler was a soccer player & a carefree teen that loved to laugh & have a good time.
Nearing 10 pm that night, Tyler & his father got out of their car at a closed Kia dealership to look at a blue Ford pickup truck that was parked near the entrance along Stadium Drive. Alexis stayed inside the backseat of their Range Rover to wait for them. Only moments later, surveillance video from the dealership showed Dalton enter the frame. After he drove around the lot, he parked in front of the dealership offices & approached Tyler & Rich on foot, walking past the Range Rover where Alexis sat inside.
Dalton later indicated that he drove to the dealership with the intention of looking at a black BMW when he incidentally noticed the father & son looking at the truck. Alexis remained in the car & watched as the man approached Tyler & Rich & asked them what they were looking at. As the men turned to refer to the pickup truck, he pulled out his gun & began shooting. They both fell to the ground while Alexis ducked behind the seat, shocked & horrified by what had just happened.
Another witness driving by later said that even after the father & son fell, Dalton continued to fire; sixteen shell casings were found littered around the ground. One of the victims had been shot nine times while the other was shot seven times.
When Dalton felt satisfied, he approached the black BMW that drew him to that location in the first place & tried the door, finding it locked. As he headed back to his own car, he walked past the Range Rover where Alexis trembled in fear, still crouched down. She was able to see the man’s shadow walk past the car.
Realizing she forgot her cell phone at Tyler’s house, she waited for about 90 seconds before she crept over to her boyfriend, who was lying on his back & pulled his cell phone from his pocket. She ran back to the Range Rover & called 911 at 10:08 pm. As officers arrived, they saw the heartbreaking image of a father who’d fallen into his son’s lap, almost as if they were hugging. Tyler & Rich tragically pronounced dead at the scene.
Meanwhile that Saturday night, a group of five ladies were out enjoying time together; four of the women were over the age of 60, Mary Lou Nye, Mary Jo Nye, Dorothy “Judy” Brown & Barbara Howthorne while Abigail Kopf was 14-years-old. Abbie was with Barbara, who had always been like a grandmother to her.
The five women met up for dinner earlier that evening at the Cracker Barrel & afterward, they drove together to see a performance of Chinese acrobatics on campus. When the show ended a little after 10 pm, they were back at the Cracker Barrel to split back into two groups so they could head home. By the time Dalton drove up, four women were in one car while Mary Lou Nye was in her minivan.
Dalton later indicated that he went up to the woman in her van, Mary Lou Nye, & asked her if she could spare a dollar to make America great again. When she told him that she didn’t have a dollar, he shot her in the head. As he turned to run away, he heard the four other women in the other car screaming so he shot them too. He eventually told authorities that he shot the driver first, then the rear-seat passenger on the driver’s side, then the front-seat passenger & then the rear-seat passenger behind her.
Surveillance video from the Cracker Barrel was not as clear as the footage from the Kia dealership, but depicted the same shooter. The man in the video was in no hurry & worked in a methodical manner.
While officers were at the scene of the shooting at the Kia dealership, they heard reports over the radio about another shooting at the Cracker Barrel. The officers were stunned to learn that there was an active shooter on the loose. The only information they had about Dalton at this point was that he was an older white male driving a dark Chevy HHR.
When authorities responded to the Cracker Barrel parking lot, they realized that four women had been shot; three were deceased while two were clinging to life. Barbara Hawthorne was still conscious, able to communicate & actually tried to help herself out of the car.
14-year-old Abbie had been shot in the head, but amazingly, she was still alive & immediately rushed to the hospital. At 11:45 pm Vicki Koph received the unimaginable phone call that her daughter was at Bronson Methodist Hospital after she’d been shot in the head. In the meantime, it was incorrectly announced on the news that all five victims from the Cracker Barrel parking lot had died.
Vicki rushed to the hospital & found her daughter in the ICU. A couple of hours later, Abbie flatlined as staff members rushed in to start CPR. The resuscitation went on & on until Vicki could take no more & instructed them to stop. As she said her tearful goodbyes, the staff began to unhook Abbie from the ventilator & equipment was taken from the room. After the fourteen-year-old girl was covered with a blanket to her neck, Vicki laid her head on her daughter’s chest & as she did, she heard a heartbeat & began screaming for a nurse to come back. Soon, the room was filled with the medical team once again & Abbie was hooked back up to her life support machines.
Doctors told Vicki that Abbie’s condition was grim & the odds of her surviving were very slim. Her skull had been shattered & the frontal lobe of her brain was removed while a protective plate was put in its place. Abbie was in a coma for days while Vicki was holding vigil at her daughter’s bedside.
About one week later, Abbie miraculously woke up from her coma & asked her mom what happened. She sobbed when Vicki told her about the shooting, but only hours later, she asked the same question again, unable to retain the information.
She was utterly devastated when she learned that Barbara Hawthorn hadn’t survived. Despite the fact that she had been conscious & talking as officers arrived at the scene, Barbara sadly died later at the hospital. According to Abbie, the sweet, loving woman had the best hugs & the best laugh. She was later told that Barbara pushed her down during the attack, possibly saving her life.
In addition to Barbara, sisters-in-law, 62-year-old Mary Lou Nye & 60-year-old Mary Jo Nye, along with 74-year-old Judy Brown, lost their lives in the parking lot of the Cracker Barrel as a result of Dalton’s rampage.
Abbie’s recovery far surpassed what doctors ever expected. The fact that she survived in itself was amazing, but when she woke from her coma, doctors questioned if she would be able to talk, walk or eat, all functions she has been able to regain.
She spent six months at a rehab facility in Grand Rapids where she learned to walk again after losing significant sensation to the left-side of her body. Throughout this time she also struggled with debilitating headaches & her intense recovery was met with complications after the plate in her head became infected & had to be removed.
Abbie still struggles to fully recover from what happened while childhood memories have been wiped away & there are only a few things she remembers from before the shooting. As far as the night of the shooting, she only recalls pieces from the acrobatics show they attended, but nothing else after that scene. She’s since gotten a service pig named Snuffles & has returned to school & has been told that she has an 80% chance of making a full recovery. Abbie hopes to one day work with animals.
After Dalton left the Cracker Barrel, he headed back to his home sixteen miles away. A neighbor recalled hearing four shotgun blasts from his property at 11:20 pm & he later told investigators that he’d fired the shots into a garden shed with a shotgun.
He left the shotgun behind, reloading the Walther 9-mm with twenty fresh rounds & climbed back into the Chevy HHR. After killing six people & injuring two, he began picking up Uber fares, driving people around downtown Kalamazoo, his loaded weapon concealed in his coat.
Meanwhile, the police had set-up an emergency operations center at the Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
Dalton later indicated that it all started that afternoon when he was at the dog park & his Uber app beeped. He said he felt as if he was being urgently summoned. He drove as quickly as he could to the college campus, but his first customer refused to enter his car because of his dog. He indicated it was the Uber app that made him get his gun & donne the bulletproof vest. He said he shot Tiana Carruthers because it just had a hold of him.
Earlier that Saturday, Carole, their 15-year-old son & 10-year-old daughter went out so he decided to head with the family dog & then he ran errands with his friend Brian for a couple of hours. As they wrapped things up, he told Brian that he might take a nap & go to work. Dalton worked as an insurance loss adjuster in Kalamazoo, but in the past two weeks he’d started driving for Uber for extra cash since he hoped to take his family to Disney World.
Brian later told authorities that Dalton was his best friend & said he noticed that he seemed a little more quiet than usual that afternoon. When he asked if anything was wrong, Dalton told him no. He asked Brian if he had any interest in driving for Uber, but he explained that he was too busy.
Two days before the killing spree, Carole noticed that her husband seemed down, but when she asked him about it, he said he was just tired from all the driving on top of his full-time job.
Meanwhile, Dalton was still out driving for Uber that night & at 11:30 pm he accepted a ride request for a 19-year-old student named Nick, but Nick was unable to find the car. The ride was cancelled at 11:58 pm with a $5 fee. When he called Dalton, irritated with the charge, Dalton told him to report it to Uber.
At 12:04 am, now in the early morning hours of Sunday, February 21, Dalton picked up three friends & took them to the dorms at Western Michigan University. The ride was completed without incident, the students only noting that the driver didn’t seem very friendly. They did find it odd that they had to give him directions since he didn’t know where he was going.
Meanwhile, Derek, a law student from Indianapolis, was out with family when he decided to call on an Uber rather than walk the short distance to their hotel because they were told about an active shooter out on the loose. At 12:12 am, Dalton pulled up & Derek, his wife & his in-laws climbed into the car. They spoke of the active shooter & Derek even joked asking Dalton, You’re not the shooter, are you? Dalton explained that he was only tired from driving for seven hours. The rest of the drive, they just chatted & Dalton drove carefully, their ride ending at 12:15 am.
From there, he went on to pick up a few guys at Central City Tap House at 12:26 am after they’d been told about the active shooter as well as the man’s description. They noted that the driver & his car fit the description, but they figured it was just a common car & they never fathomed an Uber driver who was out picking up fares was the active shooter.
Just like with Derek, customer Marc Dunton asked Dalton in a joking manner if he was the guy going around killing people & Dalton responded, That is crazy. No way, I’m not that guy. The drive concluded without any issues.
Sergeant James Harrison was called into the city that night as part of the investigation when he spotted a black Chevy HHR over his right shoulder that was preparing to pull out of the Up And Under parking lot.
Meanwhile, a student from Western Michigan, Mallory Lemieux, was out with her mom & some friends when she noticed that her dad had been repeatedly texting & calling. She went to the bathroom to ask him what was going on when he told her about the active shooter & explained that it was an older man driving a Chevy HHR.
At 12:33 am, when Mallory’s Uber request was accepted, she panicked when she saw that it was a Chevy Equinox driven by Jason. She focused on the word Chevy rather than Equinox or HHR as well as Jason’s picture. Unsettled, she cancelled the ride & tried to re-book but for a second time, but the same car & driver accepted at 12:34 am.
Mallory cancelled the ride a second time watching her app as the car icon moved past the location where she & her group were gathered. At this very time, Sergeant Harrison began trailing Dalton while Mallory tried Uber for the third time, once again pairing with Jason & his Chevy Equinox. She saw the car’s icon was now stopped as she cancelled the ride a final time.
When Harrison & another patrol car turned on their cruiser’s lights, Dalton pulled over almost immediately & he put his hands out the window as instructed. Police had been fully prepared for a shootout as they pulled the man over. When he was patted down at 12:38 am, Harrison found a pistol & Dalton was quickly handcuffed & driven away. The officers on scene breathed a sigh of relief that the arrest had been so peaceful after they reflected that the man had been wearing a bulletproof vest.
When the story was released to the media, there was speculation over the phone call Dalton received while he drove Matt Mellon that afternoon as his erratic behavior began right after that call. They wondered what transpired during the call that flipped his behavior. It came out that Dalton’s son called him as he, his mom & his sister sat down to eat at Wings Etc. to see if he wanted them to pick food up for him. It’s unclear what the real trigger was that caused him to become unhinged.
Police described him as cooperative, matter-of-fact, polite, meek & mild as he was brought into the station. Investigators heard from people who interacted with Dalton & learned that he could be very sweet & mild while other times, he could have moments of unreasonable anger, but never to the degree that anyone could have anticipated this happening.
While he was running errands with Brian earlier that day, the men visited three gun stores & Dalton purchased an $85 tactical vest that had a chest pocket designed to hide a handgun. However, this was not out of the ordinary as Brian & Dalton often visited gun stores. Those who saw him that afternoon said he was smiling & joking.
Dalton initially refused to tell officers why he’d done what he’d done that night for a total of twenty-two times before he finally got more comfortable & began talking. He told investigators exactly what happened that day, beginning with his ride with Matt Mellon. When he discussed shooting Tiana, he mentioned that she was dead. When the detective asked him why he thought that, he replied, Because how can you survive that many gun shots. He spoke calmly & without emotion. He said he wasn’t suicidal & he wasn’t on any medication or drugs. He denied having a history of mental health issues & insisted he wasn’t an anti-government or militia person. He also said, I’m not a killer & I know that I have killed.
Investigators tried to understand why he chose the victims he shot that day & Dalton indicated that it was completely random.
When he did finally say what triggered him that night, he came across to investigators as someone rational enough to know that what he was saying sounded delusional. He finally said that when he opened the Uber app, a symbol appeared that he recognized as the Eastern Star Symbol & a devil head popped up on his screen. It was when he pressed the button on the app that all the problems started. He said the iPhone can take you over & you could drive over 100 mph & go through stop signs to get places. When the app changed from red to black, the devil head would then give you an assignment & take over your whole body.
Dalton told investigators that his grandmother was in the Eastern Star, one of the largest fraternal organizations in the world while his grandfather was part of the Masons club, a fraternal organization for men. According to the Bangor Masonic Center, the organization was created in 1850 & is for those wanting to make the world a better place. Dalton’s mother indicated that in the weeks before the shooting, she had an unusual call with her son & he’d asked her about the Masons.
Five days after the shootings, Carole Dalton filed for divorce from her husband of twenty years in order to protect herself & her children. She visited him in jail twice though his parents declined to see their son & had gone back to Florida. When investigators first spoke with Dalton’s parents, they couldn’t understand what happened & tearfully told them they’d only recently spent Christmas with their son & he seemed fine.
No one could wrap their head around what prompted a previously known healthy, stable person to go on an unprompted, murderous rampage. Many wondered if his story about the Uber app taking him over was only a ploy to use the insanity defense. The fact that he had the wherewithal to change cars, change guns & donne a bulletproof vest were actions that proved that he knew what was going on.
Meanwhile, the psychologist found Dalton competent to stand trial. During a pre-trial hearing in late May, three months after the shootings, Dalton had a convoluted outburst while Tiana Carruthers was describing how he had shot her that night & he had to be dragged from the courtroom. Meanwhile, Tiana was sobbing as she felt she was taken straight back to the horrific day she nearly lost her life.
25-year-old Tiana Carruthers’ life changed forever on what started as a typical Saturday with her daughter. After she was shot four times, her left arm had to be reconstructed & a bullet will forever remain in her body as a painful reminder of that day.
Weeks later, someone told police that Dalton once discussed choking & killing the family cat, then leaving the cat’s body on the marital bed. When Carole was asked about this, she confirmed that she’d found their cat, Leo, dead on her side of the bed seven years earlier, but she assumed he died of natural causes.
On Monday, January 7, 2019, nearly three years after his murderous rampage, Jason Dalton pleaded guilty to all sixteen counts against him, including six counts of murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit murder & eight felony firearm charges. He was given six life sentences without the possibility of parole, one life sentence for each of the six people he killed.
53-year-old Rich Smith, his wife, Laurie, & their daughter, Emily, had gone to do their taxes that Saturday. Rich met up with his 17-year-old son, Tyler, who was excited to show his dad the electric blue pickup truck that caught his eye earlier that day when they were both gunned down. Tyler & his girlfriend, Alexis Cornish, had been at a baby shower earlier that day for Alexis’ mom when they decided to go out car shopping. Both Tyler & his dad, Rich, were funny, outgoing, happy men who had identical personalities, according to Emily Smith.
62-year-old Mary Jo Nye was a wife, mother & grandmother who loved socializing with her friends, playing cards & going to shows. 60-year-old Mary Lou Nye loved to cook & her husband said that she made a heck of an apple pie, while 74-year-old Judy Brown was a wife, mother & grandmother, a happy woman who was active in her church. According to her nephew, 68-year-old Barbara Hawthorne was the hippie aunt & had an amazing record collection. Sadly, despite the fact that she was talking & moving on her own accord after she’d been shot, she later died at the hospital after undergoing surgery. Barbara Hawthorne was a retired Kellogs employee while Mary Jo Nye was a teacher, Mary Lou Nye was a retired DMV employee & Judy Brown was a caregiver for senior citizens.
14-year-old Abbie Kopf adored Barbara & even called her Grandma. She loved to spend time with her & her friends, playing cards or going to sewing class.
Jason Dalton’s 2016 rampage isn’t just a story of violence, but also a mirror of trust that we hand over daily to strangers. We accept this trust as we climb into a car driven by a stranger, board an airplane flown by an unknown pilot, go into surgery with a doctor we really don’t know. The majority of the time, these events pass without issue, but as Kalamazoo learned, when that trust fractures, the fallout can be swift, violent & irreversible, leaving you to wonder just how much you’re really risking with every Ride Accepted.
References:
- Time: Kalamazoo shooting suspect’s Uber passenger ‘went into fight or flight mode’
- M Live: Uber could have stopped driver before Kalamazoo shooting rampage, lawsuit says
- ABC News: Uber driver shooting rampage victim, 17, discusses long road to recovery: ‘Sometimes I don’t feel normal’
- GQ: The Uber Killer: The real story of one night of terror
- Bangor Masonic Center: Eastern Star
- ABC News: The night an Uber driver went on a murderous rampage, terrorizing a Michigan town
- News Channel 3: Uber shooter Jason Dalton sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole
