Forty-five-year-old Jason Dalton of Kalamazoo County was arrested early today in downtown Kalamazoo following a massive manhunt after the shootings began early yesterday evening, said Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Chief Jeff Hadley. Hadley said Dalton, who is being held at the county jail, has no known criminal history.
Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Paul Matyas described a terrifying rampage that began about 6 pm outside the Meadows Apartment complex in Richland Township, on the eastern edge of Kalamazoo County, where a woman was shot multiple times and seriously wounded. She was scheduled for surgery this morning.
Fifteen minutes after that, five people - including the teenage girl who police originally said had been killed, based on a pronouncement by medical officials - were gunned down in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant along Interstate 94, Matyas said. Police said this morning the injured teen remained in serious condition.
Matyas said authorities did not believe the shootings were targeted at specific people, describing them as "our worst case scenario." "These are random murders," he said.
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"We had no problem with him," Matyas said of Dalton's apprehension. "In this particular case, we're just thankful it ended the way it did - before he could really kill anybody else."
Police said each of the shootings was random and Dalton was the only suspect.
"There's no common denominator with any of these," Matyas said. "This person was just waiting in the parking lot of the apartment complex. The one at... The dealership, they were looking at cars. The ones at Cracker Barrel, they were just sitting in their cars. "There is absolutely no common denominator... Through race, age, anything."
"This is every community's nightmare - when you have someone going around just randomly killing people, no rhyme, no reason," he said. "Obviously, we're going to interview the individual and we're hoping to gather... What he was thinking, what type of methodology he used, if any, in these killings."
Kalamazoo, with a population of about 75,000, is about 160 miles west of Detroit.