An Uber spokesperson confirmed Jason Brian Dalton worked as a driver for the company.
Jason Brian Dalton was employed as an Uber driver when he allegedly shot and killed six people in Michigan on Saturday, the ride-hailing company confirmed to BuzzFeed News.
Jeff Karoub / AP
Dalton is in custody following a string of shootings — described by officials as "senseless, random violence" — that left six dead in Kalamazoo County on Saturday night.
The shootings in three separate locations also critically injured two people, including a 14-year-old girl.
As news of the shootings began to circulate Sunday, a few residents of the county realized the alleged gunman looked familiar, and may have in fact been their Uber driver as recently as Saturday.
Public Safety Chief Jeff Hadley told CNN that they were "looking into [Dalton's] connection to Uber and whether or not he was picking up fares in between the shootings."
On Saturday evening, Kalamazoo resident Mackenzie Waine warned her friends on Facebook not to get into a car with a driver named Jason. She said the driver had acted erratically while transporting her fiancé, Matt Mellen.
"A little bit ago my fiancé got a ride with him and he was driving VERY erratically," she wrote in the post, which has been taken down but was provided to local news channel WWMT by Mellen.
"They sideswiped a car blowing through the stop sign. ... Then this man proceeded to drive 80mph down west main swerving in and out of oncoming traffic," Waine wrote. She said Mellen continuously pleaded with the driver to pull over, but he refused.
"Hoping this man will be arrested or hospitalized soon if he has a medical condition causing his behavior," Waine's post concluded.
Mellen spoke with WWMT about his ride, confirming what his fiancé wrote on Facebook.
"He wouldn't stop. He just kind of kept looking at me, like, 'Don't you want to get to your friend's house?' and I'm like, 'I want to get there alive,'" Mellen said.
"I'm upset because I tried contacting Uber after I had talked to the police saying that we needed to get this guy off the road," says Mellen.
Facebook user Megan Knight also posted images of Dalton's Uber driver profile picture, saying that some of her friends had been driven by him days before. She said she had almost gotten into a car with him herself.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1UgqxWp
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