New GQ Article on Accused Mass Killer
Wow. It's a long read, but this GQ article on the Kalamazoo Uber shooting is pretty compelling. I learned a few things that I'd either missed before or that hadn't totally registered with me.
- The call Dalton took on Saturday afternoon just before he started driving and acting crazy was from his son.
- Dalton had spent part of the afternoon running errands with his friend Brian, a volunteer sheriff's deputy, who said he was quieter than usual, but otherwise pretty normal. Dalton even asked him if he's like to start driving for Uber.
- As Dalton started driving erratically and dangerously through downtown Kalamazoo with passenger Matt Mellon, the family's German Shepard, Mia, cowered on the floor in the back seat as Mellon begged Dalton to stop.
- When Dalton finally did stop and Mellon scrambled out of the car, witnesses Kacey Black called police. GQ's Chris Heath writes that Kacey Black recalled saying she "called 911, describing the silver Chevy SUV, and an Uber driver throwing out a passenger, but she didn’t feel they grasped the extremity of what she’d seen. 'They basically just blew me off,” she says. They said, ‘Okay, well, we’ll report that.’ They sounded like they didn’t even believe me.'
- Mellen also called 911 and had to tell the story three times as he was transferred to different jurisdictions.
- The writer says that people who knew Dalton the best and longest were among the most baffled. One old friend said they used to talk about people snapping all of a sudden and doing something terrible.
- Neighbor James Block, said Dalton was very sociable and loved to talk. He says the rumor that Dalton liked to fire guns behind his property was not true.
- The glock pistol used to shoot Tiana Carruthers had apparently jammed and was found on Dalton's work bench.
- Victim Tyler Smith's girlfriend Alexis survived by hiding in the back seat of their car, and had left her cell phone at Tyler's house. She had to retrieve Tyler's phone from his body to call police.