Six killed in Michigan shooting rampage

Police investigate the scene early on February 21, 2016, where people were shot in vehicles outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A suspect has been arrested. Mark Bugnaski/KalamShow more

CHICAGO // A gunman killed six people in a shooting spree in the northern US state of Michigan, police said on Sunday after arresting an armed man for the crime.

The suspect was apprehended at 12.40am on Sunday, hours after the shooting rampage in the city of Kalamazoo on Saturday night.

“We believe we have our suspect in custody,” police officer Lt Dave Hines said, adding that that there were three separate shootings - one outside an apartment complex, another outside a car dealership, and the third at a chain restaurant.

Jason Dalton, 45, was arrested in downtown Kalamazoo following a massive manhunt that spanned nearly seven hours, said Kalamazoo department of public safety chief Jeff Hadley. Mr Hadley said Dalton, who is being held at the county jail, has no known criminal history and described him as a “strong suspect”.

The gunman’s motives were unclear.

Kalamazoo county undersheriff Paul Matyas described a terrifying rampage that began about 6pm outside the Meadows apartment complex in Richland Township, where a woman was shot multiple times and seriously wounded.

Four hours later and 24km away, a father and son were fatally shot while looking at cars at the dealership. Fifteen minutes after that, five people – including a teenage girl – were gunned down in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant along Interstate 94, Mr Matyas said. Police said the injured teen remained in serious condition.

“This is your worst nightmare, when you have somebody just driving around randomly killing people,” he said.

The suspect was armed when he was arrested at a traffic stop while driving through downtown Kalamazoo, but did not resist when approached by law enforcement officers, Mr Matyas said.

Police said each of the shootings was random and Dalton was the only suspect.

“There’s no common denominator with any of these,” Mr Matyas said. “This person was just waiting in the parking lot of the apartment complex ... There is absolutely no common denominator ... through race, age, anything.”

The Kalamazoo shootings follow a pattern of mass shootings in the United States that include the December 2 massacre in San Bernardino, California that left 14 people dead and 22 wounded, and the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in which 20 children and six adults were shot dead.

Gun violence kills about 30,000 Americans every year and mass shootings have been on the rise in the US.

According to the tracking website gunviolencearchive.org, there were 330 mass shootings in the US in 2015, up from 281 in 2014. They affected nearly every part of the country, reaching into both big cities and small towns.

* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press