An Uber driver in the US has sensationally pleaded guilty to murdering six people in 2016 in between giving rides, meaning he is set to face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Jason Dalton entered a surprise confession on Monday (US time), admitting to the shooting deaths of six people in a rampage in Michigan that spread across several hours on February 20th, 2016.
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45-year-old Dalton entered the shock confession and subsequent guilty plea right on the cusp of a jury being selected for a fully-fledged trial of the case. Instead, he will now face the mandatory sentence of life in prison with no parole.
On the evening in question, Dalton accepted a ride request from a man named Matt Mellon, who asserts that, mid-ride, Dalton took a brief and otherwise inconsequential phone call from his son. Immediately after hanging up, however, Dalton is said to have floored the accelerator, swerving into oncoming traffic, blowing through a stop sign, and sideswiping another car. Mellon escaped the vehicle after Dalton finally slammed on the brakes and stopped.
In the hours following that incident – the full (very harrowing) account of which can be read about here – Dalton shot a 25-year-old woman four times, completely at random, before driving off to meet with his wife and children where he changed vehicles. The first shooting victim survived.
After that, quite remarkably, Dalton took and completed several Uber rides without incident.
Later in the evening, Dalton shot and killed two men at a Kia dealership, again completely at random. A short time after that, he open fired on cars parked outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant around 8km from the site of the Kia shooting, killing four additional people and wounding one more as they sat inside their cars.
In subsequent legal proceedings, Dalton claimed he was being controlled by a “devil figure” that appeared to him on the Uber app on the day of the killings. However, he had been deemed mentally fit to stand trial, and had abandoned a planned defence of insanity last week.
A judge presiding over Dalton’s subsequent plea of guilty on four counts of murder and two of attempted murder asked the 45-year-old if he was entering it voluntarily, to which he replied “Yes, I’ve wanted this for quite a while.”
Prior to the shooting, Dalton had no criminal history and no recorded history of mental illness. He has remained silent on his motivations since his arrest in 2016. No firm motive for the shootings has ever been established. The case continues to baffle investigators.
Dalton will be formally sentenced on February 5th.
