Crazed Uber Driver Goes On Shooting Spree While Picking Up Passengers
[Kalamazoo, Michigan]
On February 20th, 2016, Uber driver, Jason Dalton (45), picked up his first passenger, Matt Mellen at 4:21pm.
As the route started, Matt explained that Jason was driving in a noticeably erratic manner. Despite Matt begging for him to calm down, Jason swerved into oncoming traffic, drove onto a median strip, and side-swiped another driver. When Jason came to a stop sign, Matt found an opportunity to immediately hop out and call 911, ultimately warning operators that Jason was bound to hurt many people soon. Meanwhile, Matt’s fiance took to social media to make the general public aware of the situation.
As she was posting to social media, Jason received a notification for his next ride. A woman needed to be picked up. A witness reported seeing him aggressively driving toward an apartment complex around 5:40pm. Apparently, there was a mix up with where exactly the person was located within the complex because he drove up to Tiana Carruthers (25) as she was supervising six children, including her daughter, playing outside. When she told Jason that she wasn’t the one who placed the request for an Uber, he responded with repetitive gunshots. In the midst of the gunfire, Tiana managed to scurry the children out of the line of the bullets. She miraculously survived.
As he fled from the scene, he collided with another vehicle followed by heading home to gather some belongings. Jason explained to his wife that the damage on his car came from an angry taxi driver. At this point, he switched cars to avoid detection and grabbed a different gun. Before walking out of his front door, he explained to his wife that he couldn’t tell her what was going on, but it would be on the news soon. Oddly enough, his wrath ceased for four hours as he picked up more Uber requests and drove them around without incident.
At 10:01pm, Jason decided to resume his evil antics as he parked his car at a car dealership and watched a father and son looking at vehicles. He initially approached Rich (53) and Tyler (17) Smith to ask what type of cars they were looking at. Neither could respond before Jason unloaded 18 shots in their direction. The father and son were immediately killed while Tyler’s girlfriend hid in the back seat of their car. Another petrified witness located at a nearby Burger King was able to call 911 and film Jason fleeing the scene in his vehicle.
10 minutes later, Jason arrived at a Cracker Barrel restaurant located five miles away from the car dealership. He walked up to the window of Barbara Hawthorne (68) who was sitting in her car with her granddaughter Abigail Kopf (14). He asked her a question followed by instantaneous shots. Barbara was killed, but Abigail survived despite being shot in the head.
Just seconds later, he turned his attention to a vehicle parked closely to Barbara’s. Inside were her three friends, Mary Lou Nye (62), Mary’s sister in law, Mary Jo Nye (60), and Dorothy ‘Judy’ Brown (74). All three women were instantly killed from more gunfire.
Police were already on scene at the car dealership shooting which allowed them to hear the shots rippling through the town coming from Cracker Barrel. An active shooter warning was put out to all Kalamazoo citizens and panic pinged from all corners of town.
At 12:04am, Jason resumed his Ubering by picking up and dropping off three people from a college dormitory. His next ride ironically asked him if he was the active shooter because they heard about the warning, but Jason simply replied “No.” When the group was safely dropped off, he picked up one last set of people. One of the passengers during that ride also asked Jason the same question — whether this be due to another joke or gut instinct. As Jason carelessly continued on through his shift, officers swarmed all parts of the city to locate him.
At 12:36am, they finally spotted him dropping off his last three people. He was pulled over four minutes later and arrested without conflict. It was determined that over 30 rounds were shot during his rampage and there was no real motive.
One of his surviving victims, Tiana Carruthers, was able to testify against him and share the impact of his choices. However, during one of her testimonies, Jason continuously interrupted her, overwhelming her and causing her to cry. Officers forcefully rushed him out of the courtroom while the trial was set to be resumed at a later time.
Tiana was able to give a victim impact statement later on where she had much more confidence in her presence. She demanded Jason to look her in the face, but he refused to. “You tried to kill us all. You failed. I’m standing right in front of you…I’m still standing here…how does that make you feel…look at me”, she asserted. Although she had such power behind her words, Jason was relatively unbothered by the passion.
Jason Dalton was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his Uber massacre.
