US 'random' shooting leaves six dead
February 21, 2016
A man shot dead six people and wounded two others in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, US police said Sunday. Officers were revising the death toll from seven, after a seriously wounded 14-year-old girl was mistakenly named as a fatality.
A 45-year-old male suspect has been apprehended.
The man allegedly shot at his victims from an apartment complex parking lot, a car dealership, and outside a restaurant over a period of four hours on Saturday evening.
"Victims were selected at random," police said, adding that an "even-tempered" individual was in custody. He has no known criminal record. Authorities said they had not yet established a motive.
"How do go and tell the families of these victims that they weren't targeted for any reason other than they were there to be a target," Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting asked at a Sunday press conference.
Four-hour shooting spree
Undersheriff Paul Matyas gave details of the rampage, which began at 6 pm local time outside the Meadows Apartment buildings in Richland Township. A woman there was shot several times and badly wounded. She is expected to survive.
Four hours later, at a car lot 15 miles away, an 18-year-old young man and his father were gunned down while browsing at the dealership. Just 15 minutes later, police were called to a nearby restaurant were five people were shot, including the girl authorities originally had included in the number of fatalities.
About two hours and forty minutes later, Dalton was arrested in a residential neighborhood after his car was spotted in downtown Kalamazoo. Matyas said he did not resist arrest. A search of his car revealed a semi-automatic weapon.
"We had no problem with him," Matyas said of the process of taking the man into custody. "In this particular case, we're just thankful it ended the way it did - before he could really kill anybody else."
While Matyas declined to offer any further details of what was found inside the car, he did say that the suspect had been in contact with a number of people during the shooting spree.
es/jm (AP, Reuters)