Skip to main content
Partly Cloudy icon
21º

Kalamazoo shootings suspect told police Uber app controlled him 'like A.I.'

911 audio depicts chaos from shootings

The 911 calls and arrest video from February's massacre in Kalamazoo depict the horror and chaos as a gunman struck again and again, leaving six people dead. 

Jason Dalton had his family dog in the car with him when he allegedly began his shooting rampage. Dalton apparently was working as an Uber driver and taking fares during his shooting spree. He blames the Uber app he was using for the violence, telling police after he was arrested Feb. 20 that the app took him over "like artificial intelligence that can tap into you body," according to a police document.

View the 87-page document from the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office here.

Six people were killed and another two were wounded when the shooter was finished. For all the bloodshed, he was eerily passive during his arrest. The arresting officer said Dalton was slow to respond to instructions. Video of the arrest shows the officer pull a pistol from the suspect's right pocket. When he asked if the gun was registered in his name, "Dalton did not respond to my questioning and continued staring blankly ahead the whole time while walking him to the patrol vehicle."

An arresting officer also said a small, "ripped" piece of cardboard which "appears to be a card associated with a shooting range" was found during a pat down of Dalton. The officer also said Dalton was wearing a bullet proof vest which Dalton said belonged to his son.

It was later, according to documents, when Dalton told investigators his phone was controlling him at the time of the shootings. However, he told investigators he had trouble remembering the events. 

More: Kalamazoo deputy speaks out about arresting shooting rampage suspect

Dalton: App 'started making him be like a puppet'

According to the arresting officer's report (view here), Dalton said when he logged onto the Uber app it "started making him be like a puppet." He told police he would have tried to have a "shootout with police, when the log in went from the black symbol back to the red, that's when Dalton stopped his thought."

"Dalton explained to us that when the app changed from red to black that is when he started having problems."

Dalton described 'devil figure' in Uber app

He told police during a series of interviews "the iPhone could take you over." He said he "wishes he would never have spoken what that symbol was when he saw it on his phone."

According to the report, 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."

"He said it starts out that you have to follow the navigation, but it gets to the point where you don’t have to drive at all, the car just goes. He was seeing himself from outside of his body."

Dalton talked about the Masons and the Eastern Star symbol. He said his grandmother was in the Eastern Star and his grandfather was in the Masons.

Watch the arrest video here.

 

Survivor Abigail Kopf remembers the shooter

The youngest survivor of the rampage, 14-year-old Abigail Kopf, is recovering and in a Grand Rapids rehabilitation center, after the critical gunshot wound she sustained and doctors declaring her dead.

Abigail was shot in the Cracker Barrel parking lot, along with her grandmother and three family friends.

She started with squeezing her mother’s hand after doctors thought she was brain-dead. Now she is taking her first steps and speaking.

“Abigail is amazing. She progresses tremendously every day,” Abigail’s mother Vickie Kopf said. “She said she loved us yesterday. So it was breathtaking. It’s overwhelming when you hear your daughter say that when you don’t think you’re going to hear her voice.”

Abigail is having trouble remembering things, but she does remember the shooter.

“She’s having nightmares,” Kopf said. “She keeps asking the nurses, ‘Who is the bad man with the gun?’”

Abigail’s father, Gene Kopf, is advocating for tougher gun control. He was given the opportunity to ask presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at the democratic debate in Flint about how they think mass shootings can be prevented.