"Zoo" Shootings: Kalamazoo to Kansas

Preprogramming from the summer of 2015?

On Saturday, February 20, 2016, Uber driver Jason Brian Dalton, 45, killed six people in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the 42nd mass shooting of 2016. The first people killed were Tyler D. Smith (17), and his father Richard E. Smith (53), who were both killed at the Kia car dealership. Four women – Mary Jo Nye (60), Mary Lou Nye (62), Dorothy Brown (74), and Barbara Hawthorne (68) – were killed at the Cracker Barrel. A 14-year-old girl who was with the four women at Cracker Barrel was shot in the head, and was initially presumed dead, but later confirmed to have survived. As of February 23, she remained on a ventilator and in critical condition.

Then another shooting happened in Kansas.

Gabrielle Giffords was to observe:

On February 25, 2016, three people were killed and fourteen others injured in a series of shootings in Newton and Hesston, Kansas, including in and outside an Excel Industries building. The dead victims were identified as Randall "Renee" Benjamin, 30; Joshua Higbee, 31; and Brian Sadowsky, 44. All were killed inside the Excel plant.The shooter, identified as Excel employee Cedric Larry Ford (pictured below), was then killed by a responding police officer.

The shootings began at around 4:57 p.m. at a street intersection in Newton, where Ford shot at two vehicles in a drive-by shooting. The first motorist suffered a non-fatal gunshot wound to the shoulder, while the second motorist escaped unscathed after a bullet pierced the car's windshield. He then drove down Old U.S. Route 81 and fired at oncoming traffic. His vehicle and another one crashed in a nearby ditch, after which he got out, shot and injured the other driver in the leg, and stole that victim's vehicle.

To excel is to do better than others. Mass shooters often covertly compete against each other.

Ford then arrived at Excel Industries, a manufacturer of lawnmowers, in Hesston, injured an elderly woman in the parking lot, went inside the building, and fired randomly at the assembly lines, shooting several employees. He then shot at the first officer to respond to the scene, and the officer fired back. He was struck by bullets and died at 5:23 p.m. Ford was armed with a Zastava Arms AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle and a Glock 22 semi-automatic pistol. At least 150 people were inside the plant at the time of the shooting there.

Recall that the mass shooting right before Newton-Hesston, Kansas, was the one in Kalamazoo. Strangely, in a CNN article on Cedric Larry Ford, it was noted: "On his first visit to a zoo, he was awestruck by the beauty of wildlife, friend and co-worker Matt Jarrell said." It seems an odd detail.

Attention should be given also to the fact that this shooting spree began in Newton, Kansas, reminding some of Newtown, Connecticut, the site of the Sandy Hook school shooting of December 14, 2012, occurred.

Many of the early settlers of Hesston, Kansas, were Mennonite farmers. In 1909, the Mennonite Church founded the Hesston College, because of that fact.

Cedric (French spelling: Cédric) is a masculine given name invented by Sir Walter Scott in the 1819 novel Ivanhoe. It is of Old English origin, and the meaning of Cedric is "kind and loved." The invented name is based on Cerdic, the name of a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon king (itself from Brittonic Cortices).

Have you noticed how the mainstream media are not talking about mass shootings as much as usual?

President Obama told the media that to mass shootings should dominate the news on Friday, February 26, 2016, saying "the real tragedy is the degree to which this has become routine."

The media is overwhelming the US public with its obsessive attention to ad hominem attacks between politicians, especially on the Republican side. Covert violence. Those who are being triggered to "go off" are getting the message.

It really is a zoo out there!

Kalamazoo Shooting

Starting at 6 pm local time, Saturday, February 20, 2016, a man in a black Chevy HHR began driving around Kalamazoo, Michigan, shooting and killing people. Some initial reports said nine or seven people were killed. It turns out that six did die, as one 14-year-old girl shot at a Cracker Barrel restaurant did not expire. She remains in critical condition in a hospital.

It was the 42nd shooting of 2016.*

The first shooting took place around 6 p.m., when a woman was shot four times in an apartment complex parking lot....She was with her three children. The woman is in serious condition.
Shortly after 10 p.m., two people were shot and killed at a car dealership....the victims were there looking at a vehicle.
Kelly Bainbridge was with her fiance and friends at Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo when she started getting texts and calls from concerned family members about the gunman.
"As the shootings continued to occur, the situation because more frightening," Bainbridge told CNN. She was less than 4 miles away from the dealership.
Some of her friends decided to leave the bar, but Bainbridge and her fiance stayed. The brewery's owner locked the doors to protect his patrons.
Less than 8 miles away, the third shooting occurred, this time outside a Cracker Barrel. Five people in two separate cars were shot....
The suspect was arrested about two blocks away from the brewery, Bainbridge said. Source.

Kalamazoo County, Michigan, prosecutor Jeff Getting said Sunday that there is "no reason to believe" that the shooting rampage was related to terrorism. All the victims were picked at random.

The suspect, Jason Brian Dalton, 45, was arrested when his vehicle was recognized in downtown Kalamazoo early Sunday morning.

Authorities recovered a weapon from the suspect's car, his black Chevy HHR, shown below. (I hated to hear this news, as I always do, but also then to learn about Dalton's car, since my own personal car is a black Chevy HHR that was a sync I didn't wish to read.)

Uber driver?

 The man suspected of killing six people and injuring two more in a Saturday evening shooting rampage in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was an Uber driver who may have picked up passengers that same evening, according to the ride-sharing company and police. 

"Jason Brian Dalton had passed a background check, and was a driver-partner with Uber," said Uber's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, in a statement. "We have reached out to the police to help with their investigation in any way that we can."

While the company did not address reports that Dalton picked up and dropped off customers Saturday night, authorities told CNN that it was "certainly part of our investigation."
"We're looking into his connection to Uber and whether or not he was picking up fares in between the shootings," said Public Safety Chief Jeff Hadley. CNN.

Jason is a common given name for a male. It comes from Greek Ἰάσων (Iasōn), meaning "healer," from the verb ἰάομαι, iaomai, "heal," "cure," cognate with Ἰασώ, Iasō, the goddess of healing and ἰατρός, iatros, "healer," "physician."

Brian is a male given name of Irish and Breton origin, as well as a surname of Occitan origin. It is common in the English-speaking world. It is possible that the name is derived from an Old Celtic word bre meaning "hill", or by extension "high, noble."

The name Dalton is an English name, with the meaning "from the farm in the dale." The Old English meaning is "valley town."

The name "Dalton" is familiar due to the Dalton Gang. The Dalton Gang was a group of outlaws in the American Old West during 1890–1892. It was also known as The Dalton Brothers because three of its members were brothers. The gang specialized in bank and train robberies. The Dalton Gang continues name-recognition because of its popular culture mentions.

Kalamazoo

Originally known as Bronson (after founder Titus Bronson) in the township of Arcadia, the names of both the city and the township were changed to "Kalamazoo" in 1836 and 1837, respectively. The Kalamazoo name comes from a Potawatomi word, first found in a British report in 1772. However, the Kalamazoo River, which passes through the modern city of Kalamazoo, was located on the route between Detroit and Fort Saint-Joseph (nowadays Niles, Michigan). French-Canadian traders, missionaries, and military personnel were quite familiar with this area during the French era and thereafter. The name for the Kalamazoo River was then known by Canadians and French as La rivière Kikanamaso. The name "Kikanamaso" was also recorded by Father Pierre Potier, a Jesuit missionary for the Huron-Wendats at the Assumption mission (south shore of Detroit), while en route to Fort Saint-Joseph during the fall of 1760. Legend has it that "Ki-ka-ma-sung," meaning "boiling water," referring to a footrace held each fall by local Native Americans, who had to run to the river and back before the pot boiled. Still another theory is that it means "the mirage or reflecting river." Another legend is that the image of "boiling water" referred to fog on the river as seen from the hills above the current downtown. The name was also given to the river that flows almost all the way across the state. Source.

HHR

The Chevrolet HHR (for Heritage High Roof) is a retro-styled station wagon launched by Chevrolet at the 2005 Los Angeles Auto Show as a 2006 model — and designed by Bryan Nesbitt. The HHR shares the GM Delta platform with the Chevrolet Cobalt, Pontiac G5, and Saturn Ion. In Mexico, it was sold alongside its predecessor, the Opel-sourced Chevrolet Zafira compact MPV.

The vehicle's design was inspired by the mid-1940s Chevrolet cars and trucks, specifically the 1947 Chevrolet Suburban and Advance Design pickups, with large, square fender flares and a hemispherical grille. The design of the HHR has been credited to Bryan Nesbitt who was a former designer at Chrysler where he was the lead designer of the Chrysler PT Cruiser.

The HHR was assembled in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, and was available for sale throughout North America.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, Chevrolet announced that the HHR would be discontinued after the 2011 model year, with the last HHR's available in dealerships starting in late January to early February. HHRs were also available for fleet order until May 2011.

*42

Update: Uber riders who rode with Dalton in-between the shootings describe his vehicle as being silver, as it appears to be in the following photo.