Prosecuting attorney Jeff Getting during a press conference for the mass shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday. (Photo: AP)
Prosecuting attorney Jeff Getting during a press conference for the mass shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday. (Photo: AP)
A gunman killed six people and wounded two in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, in random parking lot shootings, the police said on Sunday.
The suspect, Jason Dalton, 45, opened fire late on Saturday outside an apartment complex, a Kia car dealership and a Cracker Barrel restaurant over a period of little more than four hours, the Kalamazoo police said on their Facebook page on Sunday.
A 14-year-old girl initially reported to have been shot at the restaurant, becoming the seventh fatality, was in fact wounded and is in serious condition, a prosecutor said.
Dalton was taken into custody around 12:40 am after being stopped, the police said. “Victims were selected at random,” they said.
According to the police, the shootings in and near Kalamazoo, a city about 150 miles west of Detroit, appear to be premeditated, but the victims were thought to have been chosen at random. They said they had no doubt that the police work saved more lives from being lost.
They described it as intentional but gave no motive.
A semi-automatic pistol was found inside Dalton’s vehicle. The police said he had no known criminal record.
The carnage began about 6 pm on Saturday when a woman was wounded outside a Kalamazoo County apartment building.
The police were then called to a car dealership about 10 pm where two men, one of them an 18-year-old, were fatally shot.
About 10 minutes later, a third shooting took place in the parking lot of a nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant where four women were fatally shot, and the 14-year-old girl was seriously injured in a Cracker Barrel parking lot in Kalamazoo County, where Dalton got out of his car and started a brief conversation with people in two other cars, Matyas said. After a few seconds of talking, the gunman unloaded his weapon into both cars.
The police said surveillance video from businesses led to a description of Dalton’s vehicle. The police have not released the names of the victims, Getting said, as they have not finished notifying their relatives.
