Watch the Tense Moment Police Arrested the Kalamazoo Uber Shooting Suspect
The suspect claims the Uber app took over his “mind and body.”
In February, 45-year-old
Uber driver Jason Dalton was
on suspicion of killing six people in a shooting spree in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Now, you can watch the tense few moments when police tracked down and arrested Dalton while he was still in the middle of his Uber route.
Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office released footage on Monday showing the arrest of Dalton on February 21st, the day after the shootings took place. Reports indicated that Dalton continued to transport Uber customers between shootings.
Despite scarce details regarding the perpetrator of the bizarre shooting spree, which included eight people in three different locations, Kalamazoo police managed to arrest Dalton through something of a stroke of luck combined with an excess of caution, CNN reported:
Police said they were looking for a suspect they believed to be a white male driving a dark-colored Chevy HHR.
[Sgt. James] Harrison was parked at a stoplight just a few miles from the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department when he saw a vehicle matching that description moving slowly through the parking lot of the Up & Under sports bar.
He let the vehicle pull out in front of him and called in the license plate information. The deputy followed for several minutes, not wanting to make the traffic stop until more officers arrived, in case this was their suspect.
The driver didn’t speed up and continued normally with the police car close behind him.
When backup arrived, Harrison turned on his flashing lights to make the stop.
The driver continued for a short distance before pulling over.
“When he didn’t stop right away, it kind of brought my suspicions up a little bit, but still, at the time, we didn’t have a positive identification of who the suspect was,” Harrison said.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Dalton told police during a series of interviews that the Uber app took over his “mind and body” and forced him to undertake his deadly shooting spree:
Dalton told police that earlier that Saturday when he opened up the Uber ride service app, a symbol, which he believed was the Eastern Star, popped up. Dalton said the symbol resembled a devil’s head and “that’s when all the problems started.”
“Dalton described the devil figure as a horned cow head or something like that and then it would give you an assignment and it would literally take over your whole body,” according to police reports released Monday to the Free Press by the Kalamazoo City Attorney’s Office.
Something tells me that argument probably won’t hold up in court.