Shot teen ‘working hard to stay alive’
WASHINGTON • The teenager’s body was limp amid the tangle of wires and tubes that were keeping her internal organs alive until they could be harvested.
The 14 -year-old girl wouldn’t need them. A bullet allegedly fired by Uber driver Jason Brian Dalton during his bloody rampage across Kalamazoo, Mich., Saturday night had struck her as she sat in a car in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
She was the seventh person to die in the attack, police said, around 2 a.m. Sunday.
At Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, the girl’s body was being prepared for the surgery that would remove her organs. The girl’s mother stood at her daughter’s side for what seemed like the last time.
Then she felt her daughter squeeze her hand.
“The only word to describe it is, ‘Wow,’ ” Michigan State Police First Lt. Dale Hinz said.
The young victim, who has not been named, went into surgery Sunday morning and is still in critical condition, officials said early Monday.
After meeting with the girl’s parents on Sunday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said the teenager is “working hard to stay alive.”
“She’s got all our thoughts and prayers to have a chance to come back,” he told repor- ters. “So it’s going to be quite a recovery period.”
The girl had stopped at Cracker Barrel with a group of family friends after seeing a show at Western Michigan University.
All four of the women she was with — Mary Lou Nye, 63, Mary Jo Nye, 60; Dorothy Brown, 74, and Barbara Hawthorne, 68, were killed when Dalton allegedly fired on their cars.
Two others were killed during the apparently random shooting spree: father and son Richard Smith, 53, and Tyler Smith, 17.
Dalton admitted Monday to carrying out the attacks.
He waived his right against self- incrimination before making the statement to authorities, Kalamazoo County prosecutor Jeff Getting said.
Dalton’s statements to police were used to file charges of murder and attempted murder Monday, two days after the shootings in the Kalamazoo area.
Dalton appeared briefly in court Monday to hear the charges. He was ordered held without bond and will get a court-appointed attorney.
Authorities are still searching for a motive that might explain why Dalton fired on the people he did. The 45- year- old had no apparent connection with any of his victims.
“This is your worst nightmare, where you have somebody just driving around randomly killing people,” said Paul Matyas, undersheriff of Kalamazoo County.
An eighth victim remains hospitalized with severe injuries, Getting said. The woman, a mother of three who was the first person shot during Dalton’s hours- long spree, is expected to survive.
The outlook for the 14-year-old is less certain.
But officials are optimistic. After all, the fact that she is even alive is a miracle, Hinz said.
THE ONLY WORD TO DESCRIBE IT IS ‘WOW.’