My wild speculative guess is that he had an adverse drug reaction. I have seen people behave very destructively after taking a prescription drug as prescribed. Extreme paranoia resulted.
Yet this “drug reaction” wouldn’t have resulted in him targeting his passengers? Wasn’t it stated that he picked up fares in between some of his assaults?
repulsive as always
I’d just like to note that I can’t see what this has to do with Uber. Is there some kind of mental health screening for regular taxi drivers that would have kept him out of that profession? At least with Uber, there are likely to be some reviews. How many of you have ever reported a bad regular taxi driver? I know I haven’t, although I’ve had some pretty bad ones.
Again, the connection to Uber is that he was driving around taking Uber fares in between the shootings.
I do not think it has to do with him being an Uber driver or anything of the sort but there is some logic for bringing in his profession in this particular case. It is relevant to the timeline of what happened.
My roommate happens to be an Uber driver on the weekends. I know what he had to go through to get certified.
Trust me, my dad (lives not far from Kzoo) will be warning us all away from Uber. One more thing on the list of stuff we shouldn’t mention to him. 
Unfortunately, it is just one of those things that seem to happen for no problem. Was the guy mentally ill, and if so, why was he allowed to drive for uber? If he was mentally ill, was there enough that he shouldn’t have been allowed to own firearms (if he had them legally?). Right now we don’t know, but the one thing I agree with is these kinds of things are increasing, the number of mass shootings, many of them seemingly without reason, seem to be increasing, and someone needs to get answers. Unfortunately, when there is gridlock in even studying why these things are happening, my guess is they are going to keep increasing. Will making it harder to get guns make these kind of things happen less (empiric data suggest yes, that mass shootings tend to occur in places with easier access to guns, though whether correlation and causality apply to what extent is unknown), is it that mental illness, as some have suggested, isn’t properly supported, that far too many people are going untreated?
The only way to solve this kind of problem is to get real data on the root causes then come up with suggestions, but far too many people I think are afraid of what the facts may show, so many just proclaim things are ‘true’ but don’t let them be actually studied. It is one thing to blame mental illness, it is another thing to allow unfettered studies that would prove or disprove that, the same way with how gun access plays into all this. Civil libertarians may be afraid of these studies, because it could come down to (in their eyes) people with mental illness being scapegoated, while the pro gun folks might be afraid that the studies support the idea that guns are far too easy to get legally and allows far too many people to get them, so in the end, we end up with status quo, and when things like this happen the range of responses are “stuff happens” with a shrug of the shoulders, to those wanting to completely ban guns, to those claiming the answer is to arm everyone so they can ‘shoot the bad guys’, and everything in between.
This is such a sad story all around. I heard today that one of the victims, a 17 year old girl, was declared brain dead. One story said they were preparing her organs for transplant, another said they were talking to the family about organ donation when the girl squeezed her mom’s hand. The doctors then questioned her and said if she could hear them to squeeze and she gave them two thumbs up. All I could think about was this is something Jahi McMath;s family will be clinging to.
I’m surprised that he was able to shoot so many people so accurately. It seems unlikely that a person would be able to shoot so many people from a car–especially the four women in another car–and kill such a high percentage outright.
Just a terrible thing.
He walked up to the guys at the car dealership from what I read, they were sitting in the car. The 17 year old GF of the younger one was in the backseat and not killed. I think it is a 14 year old shot at another location who is the victim who squeezed her parent’s hand.
@Hunt see my earlier post #16. Media outlets should stop trying to tie this to Uber.
A serious and “substantive” public discussion, along with a new found political will to address “America’s gun problem” would suddenly be seen as imperative if the majority of mass shooters started looking like Tamir Rice, Travon Martin, and Eric Garner. Just sayin’…
Do you have a link for that story? These stories typically are not reported accurately. Tests for brain death cannot be done until brain swelling has had time to go down, all drugs which depress the CNS are out of the patient’s system, etc. It’s a determination that takes several steps, must be repeated by an independent physician, etc. It’s not done immediately, nor is it taken lightly. And organs aren’t “prepared for transplant.” They simply work to keep the patient’s blood pressure up by whatever means possible so that the organs don’t go into failure as well. Reporters and families often confuse “coma” with “brain death,” etc.
Here is the link about the 14 year old. It doesn’t say she was brain dead but they were making arrangements to donate her organs .
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kalamazoo-shooting-abigail-kopf-14-strong-willed-survivor/
From the linked article:
Presumably they believed she would progress to brain death. But they would not have proceeded with organ donation until she was declared brain dead or suffered cardiac death.
https://www.core.org/understanding-donation/donation-process/
The local news says the 14 year old is stable but they’re not sure whether she’ll come out of it. Statements given by the parents make them seem very realistic- hopeful but preparing for the worst.
there’s nothing random about buying a gun and killing people. it’s premeditated murder by a predator who went hunting where he knew he could find victims
@rumrunner The randomness occurs with regard to the victim(s) who, tragically, are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
again not random, they were perfect unsuspecting targets for a predator
I had not been reading this thread. However I just read a new article that is rather incredulous.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/16/technology/kalamazoo-jason-dalton-uber/index.html
The Kalamazoo suspect is suing Uber, claiming that his work for them caused him psychological damage! He claims he is in prison because of Uber (um, no). And he goes on to complain that his wife is divorcing him because of Uber (um, no…hello? did it occur to him she might be divorcing him because he is a murderer?). I guess nothing should be surprising, but this is certainly strange.
PS, he claims that he never got invited to Uber parties or never received a holiday bonus check…like these are reasons to go out and kill a bunch of people? It is almost laughable, but not really, as it is such a serious and tragic incident.