Unmasking the Uber Serial Killer | The Case of Abbie & Tiana
Between 2017 and 2020, Uber reported nearly 10,000 cases of assault and over 120 fatalities linked to its platform in the US alone. The reports cover a wide range of incidents from minor disturbances to outright murder, but the case we’re about to cover pushes far past the numbers. An Uber driver in Michigan is suspected of going on a rampage, fatally shooting strangers in between taking fares.
As many of you read, six people were gunned down in a rampage in Kalamazoo. Entirely overwhelmed by the situation, the Kalamazoo police force starts receiving frantic 911 calls by the dozen. Police know a 14-year-old girl named Abbie Kopf survived and is in critical condition. If she can stay alive, she might be able to help stop the Uber killer.
The 14-year-old was shot at the Cracker Barrel parking lot, along with four women who were all killed. At the hospital, Abigail was pronounced dead. Unfortunately, the 14-years-old has passed away as well. While doctors prepared for organ donation, she squeezed her mother’s hand. It’s 10:00 p.m. on February 20th, 2016.
14-year-old Abbie Kopf sits at a Cracker Barrel table with her best friend and surrogate grandmother, 68-year-old Barbara Hawthorne. Abbie’s calm, thoughtful demeanor often surprises others. She’s always felt more at ease around older people. The pair had just come from seeing a play downtown and now, joined by three of Barbara’s friends, they’re sharing a meal and having a good time before heading home.
As they step into the parking lot, Barbara reminds Abbie not to miss their upcoming knitting class together. The young teen sits in the front passenger seat and Barbara prepares to drive the group home. Two of the other women sit in the back while another steps into a van parked beside them. The teenager is chatting with her grandma when the sound of screeching tires interrupts them.
Outside, a black car parked itself behind the vehicles, preventing them from leaving the lot. A loud bang pierces the silence outside. Everybody in the car starts screaming. The teenager knows she’s in danger. She rolls up between her seat and the floorboards to hide. Seconds later, even louder bangs are heard.
Shards of bloody glass are sent flying everywhere inside the car. Abbie doesn’t have time to grasp what is happening before noticing that Barbara is now covering her hiding spot with her upper body. Through the broken window behind, the teenager sees the barrel of a smoking gun pointing right at her. Five hours earlier, everything seemed fine in the lively city of Kalamazoo.
It’s winter, but it’s warm outside and the snow is melting. Far in the suburbs, 25-year-old Tiana Carruthers is babysitting her seven-year-old daughter, Kaniya, her niece, and three other kids. Tiana had her daughter when she was still a teenager and raised her on her own since then. When Kaniya asked if the group could go outside to meet a friend across the street, her mom accepts on the condition that she’ll tag along to keep an eye on them.
Tiana and the girls’ walk is interrupted by a man speeding down the street in a silver SUV. It screeches to a stop right in front of them. Behind the wheel is a heavyset man with disheveled gray hair and wild eyes. He looks straight at her and bluntly says he’s here to pick her up. The tone of his voice feels off.
Keeping her calm, she says she didn’t order an Uber and tells the kids to continue walking. The SUV peels off, tires screeching again, but suddenly it circles back. Tiana freezes. In seconds, the vehicle’s back in front of them. The moment the driver starts pulling something out of his jacket, the young mother orders the kids to run.
She sees that the man has a gun. He points it straight at the children. Although she describes the moment as being almost in slow motion, there’s no time to think. Five children are in danger, including her own daughter. Without hesitation, she steps in front of them. Following the shooting in the suburb,
the Uber driver escapes before swapping guns and vehicles. For the remainder of the evening, he alternates between running fares and coldly shooting people at random. The driver, who the police quickly identified as 45-year-old Jason Dalton, shot seven people before targeting Abbie Kopf, the 14-year-old he gunned down in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.
Now standing between life and death, things could have gone way worse for the teenager if Barbara, her surrogate grandmother, hadn’t intervened to protect her. One of the women shielded Abbie with her own body and took three shots. Barbara and Abbie are both in critical condition. First responders rushed them to the hospital, doing everything they can to keep them alive.
Despite their efforts, Barbara dies shortly after arriving. Abbie, however, makes it to the ICU in time. Bronson’s Children’s Hospital contacts her mother Vicki, hesitant to tell her what happened to her daughter. “Oh Lord, where was she shot at?” And they wouldn’t answer me. And I said, “Do I have time to make it there? Tell me right now, is she dead?” And the lady on the phone said, “No, she’s not dead.
” And I said, “Then where was she shot at?” And she said, “Well, honey, it’s serious.” And I said, “Where was she shot at?” And she said, “She was shot in the head.” We made it towards the hospital and they had the hospital locked down. They walked us up to this room in the ICU, and that’s when I saw Abbie for the first time.
Abbie’s head is wrapped in blood-soaked bandages covering where the bullet has shattered her skull. Vicki later describes the scene as akin to the worst horror movie she could have imagined. An hour later, Abbie flatlines. Doctors call the time of death. Vicki can only look powerless as the nurses unplug her daughter from the monitor and pull a white drape over her lifeless body.
Vicki and her husband lie over the teenager sobbing, muttering their final goodbyes, while the nurses prepare for organ donation. It’s then that the desperate mother feels something strange. She’s sure of it. Abbie just moved. And I said something to the nurse and she said, “Honey, most bodies twitch after they die.
” She said, “It’s normal.” And then I thought I felt it again and I said, “Could you please just check her? It’d make me feel better.” A pulse. Somehow Abbie’s heart starts beating again. Nurses and doctors soon flood the room. Vicki can barely contain her excitement, but one nurse gently pulls her aside and tells her not to get too hopeful.
Even if Abbie pulls through, she may show no signs of brain activity. I was holding Abbie’s hand and I looked right at her and I said, “Abbie, if you can hear me,” I said, “This is mama.” I said, “If you can hear me at all,” I said, “Give me a sign.” And within a few minutes after that, I was sitting there and then all of a sudden, her hand just slightly went like that.
She was trying to draw the letter B in the palm. She was asking about Grandma Barb, who was killed in the shooting. Police believed she shielded Abbie, taking three bullets in the chest while she pushed Abbie down. She saved Abbie’s life. After mercilessly shooting Barbara and Abbie, Jason Dalton plays cat and mouse with the police around the city.
Cops pull over 10 vehicles matching the description of his car, desperate to find him, until they begin to tail one that’s driving suspiciously. It seems to be trying to avoid them. A short but intense car chase ensues, then the car suddenly pulls over. Jason had proven himself to be extremely dangerous over the course of the rampage and the police are expecting the worst.
The officers, clad in body armor, guns in hand, slowly approach the vehicle, expecting bullets to be flying their way at any moment. They are completely caught off guard when Jason slides his arms out of his window to surrender. Following the arrest, investigators shift their focus towards Jason’s mental state.
They have all the evidence they need, but if Jason’s found legally insane, he could avoid prison altogether and turn his sentence into a relatively short hospital stay. The police don’t want Jason to stop talking, so they indulge him in his demonic possession story. According to him, his phone turned into a horned devil head that took over his mind.
With each interview, he becomes more erratic. No one in the police force is buying his story, but they hid it well and the Uber killer slowly opens up. Eventually, they get him to talk about the attack on Abbie, Barbara, and her friends. Going over the events in reverse, investigators coax Jason into discussing every crime he committed.
Still, he justifies each of his actions by bringing back his demonic possession story. To counter his insanity plea, they’ll need a witness who could actually testify to his mental state during the killing spree. 14-year-old Abbie survived, but was placed in a medically induced coma for her own safety. As Jason goes on about his crimes like they were accomplishments to be proud of, he eventually brings up his very first victim, 25-year-old single mother Tiana Carruthers.
Tiana’s body had been riddled with bullets. Both her legs and her shoulder were shattered. One of the rounds even lodged itself inside her liver, where it should remain for the rest of her life. Paramedics arrived just in time to stabilize her before she bled out. Doctors rebuilt her clavicle and lower body with bolts and metal.
She then spent months in rehabilitation to regain the ability to walk. When she was well enough, she began giving interviews. An Uber driver in Michigan is suspected of going on a rampage earlier this year, fatally shooting strangers in between taking fares. Now, this tragic story made national headlines.
Now, during all of the chaos, my next guest risked her life to protect a playground full of kids. Please welcome Tiana. Expected to testify at Jason Dalton’s trial in 2019, Tiana quickly became a hero in the eyes of the nation. Them four kids you was babysitting, they living ’cause of you. The rest of them kids in the parking lot that you told them to run and don’t come back, they living ’cause of you.
That’s cause of you. At that first shooting scene a year ago, it was Tiana Carruthers who shielded several children from the gunman, risking her own life. She was hailed a hero. Six people were killed by Dalton. Without Tiana, the death toll could have been much higher. Three months later, the court assembles for the preliminary hearing.
Tiana is the first witness called to the bench. The tension is at its peak. As the sole survivor able to testify, the weight of the entire case is upon her shoulders. Tiana’s suffering is laid out for all to see. The judge gives her some time to compose herself before they resume the proceedings, but her trauma seems just too much to bear.
Yet she soldiers on, trying to be brave for the victims who can’t be there. She reminds herself of all the things she has accomplished since the shooting. During her recovery, she turned to writing as a way to process her current and past traumas. What follows is a poem she wrote during that time addressed to her mother.
Do you see me? Do you really see me? Can you be my mother for once? I skipped school today. I met a boy. I also put your children on the school bus. Oh, I fed them by the way. Hey, mom, mom, mother, can you hear me? I’m right here. Talk to me. You’re in and out, without a doubt, but never forgetting to tell me to take the trash out.
No hug, no kiss, just a mother’s love to be missed. Tiana’s mother battled drug addiction and was often missing from her life. In her absence, Tiana stepped into the role of caretaker at only seven years old. But she did her best to raise her younger sisters on her own in their crumbling house with no running water.
When her mother returned and things began to settle, Tiana had already spent years carrying more than most kids her age could imagine. At 17, after finding out she was pregnant, she decided to leave to raise her daughter on her own. Her sisters were older and her mother was stable enough to take over the household, but her departure didn’t go smoothly.
A family-related conflict landed her in juvenile hall. She was released soon after, but she was still just a 17-year-old girl, pregnant, alone, and with no place to go. But this didn’t stop Tiana. Through sheer determination, she rebuilt her life from the ground up and managed to give her daughter Kaniya the one thing she never had, a happy childhood.
Or at least she did, until Jason Dalton intervened and put everything she fought so hard to build at risk. Tiana has to fight back, not only for herself, not only for Kaniya, but for everyone involved. This would’ve been my opportunity to look him in his eyes and just give the facts, and knowing that him jumping at me or scaring me, he wasn’t gonna have that power.
I wasn’t gonna give it to him, because I’m stronger today. And I was telling myself, “You can do this, you know, you have to do this.” I was the only one who really talked to this man. And if I was gonna put him away, then I needed to step up and do what I needed to do. Now stuck in front of a camera in the next room over, Jason is going all in with his insanity plea, attempting to use Tiana’s own trauma against her.
According to the prosecutors present, his goal was to manipulate her into breaking down before she could retell her side of the story, events that not only portrayed him as a cold and calculated killer, but as a sane man who, however disturbing, had a normal conversation with her before bullets started flying.
Fueled by her newfound confidence, Tiana explains how Jason initially approached her, then made a U-turn, and finally pulled out a gun to aim at the many kids she was walking with. But the emotion quickly becomes overwhelming. When the prosecutor asks her to describe how it felt to be shot at, everything rushes back and Tiana breaks down again.
Abbie Kopf, the six victims, and the four children who could have died that day. It’s almost too much for the young mother. But Tiana needs to keep herself together if she wants to fight back. There’s no way she’d let Jason Dalton win again. As he struggles in his chair behind the screen, she keeps going as best she can.
Tiana’s testimony changes everything. Following the hearing, Jason drops the act, the erratic behavior, the demonic possession. It was all fake. His lawyer still pushes for a psychological evaluation, but every expert consulted agrees, his client is sane, fully competent, and was aware of his actions during the events.
With no other options left, Jason requests a plea hearing without conditions. With Jason heading to prison for life without parole and Tiana on the way towards psychological and physical recovery, only one question remains. What happened to Abbie? I almost died. And my mom was a basket case. She sat by my bed however long I was in a coma.
She just sat there and waited for me to wake up. When I did, I remember her crying with happy tears. The road to recovery was extremely challenging for the 14-year-old. She had to relearn everything almost from scratch. Even though she was making good progress physically, she also had to learn how to deal with the retrograde amnesia caused by her head injury.
A couple weeks later, I said, “What happened to me?” I said, “Don’t sugarcoat it.” And she walked in and said, “Honey, you were shot in the head and the bullet shattered your skull.” She cried and she didn’t say anything at that point. And then a couple hours later, she’d asked me again, “What happened to me?” ‘Cause she couldn’t remember it.
She couldn’t retain it. Every day for months, Abbie has to be reminded not only of the incident, but also of the murder of Barbara, her loving grandmother who sacrificed everything to save her life. I asked about Grand Barb. When I found out she was shot, I almost lost it. Why it had to be me and why it had to be Grand Barb.
We both didn’t deserve it. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. I miss her unconditionally every single day. But Abbie persevered. She even went to prom in 2019, just two months after Jason Dalton’s conviction. With the case coming to an end, Laura Hawthorne, Barbara’s niece, finally puts her heroic aunt to rest.
She always wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride. So I took her ashes to Sedona and went in a hot air balloon and left her out there in the desert. So she’s right where she wanted to be. In the end, Jason Dalton may have caused irreparable harm, but he didn’t win. It took years, but Tiana and Abbie both healed and rebuilt their lives and the families who lost loved ones on that day now cherish every moment they had with them and continue fighting for their legacies.
We don’t want them to be remembered by, oh, that’s the people that got killed by the Uber driver. I want them to be remembered, oh, those are the loving, caring, compassionate people that were taken way too soon. Thanks to her resilience, Tiana not only survived the shooting spree, but also overcame her difficult past.
Now she uses her story to inspire others as a motivational speaker focused on turning tragedy into strength and helps victims redefine themselves as survivors. It can be hard, and I know it’s challenging to deal with tragedies and struggles, but there is more to life than where you come from. Just build on it and want more for yourself.
Tiana never called herself a hero. She says any mother would’ve done the same. But would her own mother have? Would most people? This is where Tiana’s resilience shines, not just in surviving the shooting, but in holding onto the identity she built through years of struggle, a rough childhood, taking care of her sisters, having to raise her daughter on her own as a teenager, and to top it all off, taking four bullets to protect that same daughter and her friends.
Yet none of it stopped her. She knows exactly who she is and nothing can take that away from her. Him gunning me down, it doesn’t define me. Tiana now, I’m strong. Stronger than I ever could imagine. Would I do it all over again? Hell yeah, I’d do it again, without a doubt.
