Fatal victims of Kalamazoo shooting rampage identified

(Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office via AP). Authorities identified the shooter as Jason Dalton.

The suspect in the deadly shooting spree in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is identified as Jason Brian Dalton, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said Sunday morning.

(Bryan Bennett /Kalamazoo Gazette-MLive Media Group via AP).

Derek and his family weren’t the only Uber customers to have close encounters with Dalton before or during the mass shooting.

The gunman’s first victim was a woman who was with her three children outside an apartment complex when she was shot, he said.

On Sunday night, mourners gathered at Kalamazoo’s Centerpoint Church to remember the shooting victims Saturday and pray for the survivors. “We’re wondering what might have caused him to do this (to) all those innocent families and the victims”, her husband Gary Pardo told CNN affiliate WXYZ.

The girl had initially been pronounced dead, but shocked doctors when she squeezed her mother’s hand while a discussion was underway about donating her organs.Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said while she is alive, the girl was “gravely” injured.

-10:08 p.m.: A father and his 17-year-old son are fatally shot while looking at cars at Seelye Kia of Kalamazoo.

That shooting was reported at 10:08 p.m. Minutes later, the third shooting was reported, at a parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Four of them died.

For seven hours, the shooter drove from one target to another, police said, gunning down victims at random.

A general view of the Cracker Barrel where a gunman went on a shooting rampage, on February 21, 2016 in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Police say they are looking into reports that he picked up at least one Uber fare during the shootings.

A spokeswoman for Uber confirmed that Dalton was a driver for the company, but she declined to say whether he was driving Saturday night.

Mr Dalton, a driver for cab-hailing app Uber, was reported to be picking up passengers in between the attacks. Anyone found to be in violation of the policy may be prohibited from using or driving for the service.

“At this point the connection between these three incidents, between these three cases, is the defendant, is Mr. Dalton”, Getting said at a press conference.

While Dalton was known to like guns, “there wasn’t anything that would put him on the police’s radar as someone who would be likely do to something like this”, he said.

“He would go a month without mowing his lawn but was very meticulous with his cars”, Pardo said, explaining that Dalton, at times, owned a Chevrolet Camaro and two Hummer SUVs. He once worked for Progressive Insurance before leaving the company in 2011.

“He seemed pretty even-tempered”, Getting said of Dalton’s demeanor at the time of his arrest and in questioning. Getting said a semiautomatic pistol was found in Dalton’s auto.

The woman, who has since deleted the post, said 911 was called “but surprisingly they didn’t seem all that concerned”.

The murder charges carry a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole, he said.

Authorities were interviewing Dalton and reviewing his phone. “The victims did not know him; he did not know the victims”.

“This is every community’s nightmare – when you have someone going around just randomly killing people, no rhyme, no reason”, Getting said.

Police have not released the name of the woman wounded in front of her children at the apartment complex.

Four bullets flew into a closet of George’s home, she said. He was arrested without incident on Sunday while driving away from the parking lot of an area bar.