KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – It’s the end of a chapter for Kalamazoo. Jason Dalton was taken straight from sentencing at the old Kalamazoo County Courthouse to a waiting Sheriff’s van and transported straight to Jackson State Prison to begin orientation for his life as a prisoner.
He was given multiple counts of life without parole for the shooting deaths of Rick and Tyler Smith, Mary Lou and Mary Jo Nye, Dorothy Brown and Barbara Hawthorne. He was given over 18-years each for the assaults on Abigail Kopf and Tiana Carruthers three years ago this month.
Dalton sat shackled and expressionless, in his orange jail jumpsuit for an hour and a half as one survivor after another talked in heartbreaking terms about the loved ones they had lost and wished Dalton an eternity in Hell.
Gunshot survivor Tianna Carruthers, who was terrified by Dalton at the beginning of the process when he lunged at her during his preliminary hearing, turned the table on him at sentencing. She demanded that he look at her, and then demanded again but he would not. Prosecutor Jeff Getting would later call it a tremendous act of courage on Carruthers’s part.
In a brief news conference after the sentencing, Getting said he felt relieved that Dalton was finally out of the community, and because he pled guilty, unlikely to find grounds for an appeal that would ever bring him back to Kalamazoo. He called it the best possible outcome.
Survivors said they were glad that Dalton spared them of the torture of sitting through a trial and seeing and hearing about things that they would rather never experience and never forget.
Jeff Reynolds, who lost his mother on February 20, 2016, said they too have been given a life sentence, mourning for their lost loved ones. He said there is some relief and satisfaction knowing that Dalton will also never be free. Reynolds said there will never be closure for him.
