DETROIT — A Kalamazoo, Mich., Uber driver accused of killing six people and wounding two others last month told police that the ride-sharing app took over his “mind and body” and made him carry out the rampage.
In a series of interviews with police in the hours after the Feb. 20 shootings, Jason Dalton, 45, confessed to the killings, but blamed it on the Uber app, stating his smartphone directed him where to go and when to shoot people. Dalton said he would have gotten in a shootout with police when he was arrested but the app directed him not to. Dalton told police that earlier that Saturday when he opened up the Uber taxi app, a symbol, which he believed was the Eastern Star popped up. Dalton said the symbol resembled a devil’s head and “that’s when all the problems started.”
“Dalton described the devil figure as a horned cow head or something like that and then it would give you an assignment and it would literally take over your whole body,” according to police reports released Monday to the Detroit Free Press by the Kalamazoo City Attorney’s Office.
“I asked Dalton what made him get his gun tonight and he said the Uber app made him,” the report states. Dalton also said the Uber app made him put on a bulletproof vest. Dalton said he purchased the vest for his son, who is an “Explorer (scout) with the county.”
” … And Dalton told us that literally when he logged onto the site (Referring to the Uber app) it started making him be like a puppet,” the report states. Dalton told police that when the Uber app turns from “red to black that is when he started having problems.” He told the detectives that when he was about to be arrested that night by police, he would have potentially “tried to have a shootout with the police” but the log went from the black symbol back to red and that’s when he “stopped his thought.”