The Uber Serial Killer | The Case of Abbie & Tiana
“This little girl refused to give up”
SURVIVING THE UBER KILLER
Between 2017 and 2020, Uber reported nearly 10,000 cases of assault and over 120 fatalities linked to its platform in the U.S 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, not just in scale, but in sheer brutality.
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 the police and stop the Uber killer.
CRACKER BARREL HORROR
It’s 10 PM 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 has always felt more at ease around older people. The pair had just come from seeing a play downtown, and now, joined by 3 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.
Abbie turns around, but before she can ask Barbara what's going on, a loud bang pierces the silence outside. Everybody in the car starts screaming. The teenager knows she’s in danger. Taking advantage of her small frame, she rolls up between her seat and the floorboard to hide. Seconds later, even louder bangs are heard. Shards of bloodied 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.
TIANA’S COURAGE
5 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 7-year-old daughter, Kaniya, her niece, Edriana, and three other kids. Tiana had her daughter when she was still a teenager, and raised her on her own since then. When Kaniya asks 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. Out and about beside a nearby park, 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 in his voice feels off; something is wrong. 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 just no time to think. 5 children are in danger, including her own daughter. Without hesitation, she steps in front of them.
A CITY IN TERROR: JASON DALTON’S RAMPAGE
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 police quickly identified as 45-year-old Jason Dalton, shot 7 people before targeting Abbie Kopf, the fourteen-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.
Barbara and Abbie are both in critical condition. First responders rush them to the hospital, doing everything they can to keep them alive until they reach intensive care. Despite their efforts, Barbara dies shortly after arriving. Abbie, however, makes it to the ICU in time. Bronson Children's Hospital contacts her mother Vicki, hesitant to tell her what had happened to her daughter.
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’ve 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.
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.
THE ARREST & DEMONIC POSSESSION DEFENSE
After mercilessly shooting Barbara and Abbie, Jason Dalton plays cat and mouse with the police around the city for almost 2 hours. 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, and 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 on 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, so they’ll need to find someone else. 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 TESTIMONY
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. Because, yes, Tiana survived; 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.
Expected to testify at Jason Dalton’s trial in 2019, Tiana quickly became a hero in the eyes of the nation.
3 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. She’s grown so much; she’s stronger now. 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.
TIANA’S CHILDHOOD AND STRENGTH
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 7 years old, but she did her best to raise her younger sisters on her own in their crumbling house with no running water. During those difficult years, Tiana learned how to survive. 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 on probation soon after, but 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.
Now stuck in front of a camera in the next room over, Jason isn’t only going all in with his insanity plea, but is once again 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 portray him as a cold and calculated killer but also 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, asked her about a ride, 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 4 children who could have died that day. It’s almost too much to handle for the young mother.
But Tiana needs to keep herself together if she wanna 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.
JUSTICE PREVAILS
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? Somehow, even though all the odds were stacked against her, the little girl simply refuses to give up.
The road to recovery was extremely challenging for the 14-year-old. She had a plate inserted into her skull and 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.
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.
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 Hawthorn, Barbara’s niece, finally put her heroic aunt to rest.
KALAMAZOO STRONG
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.
Thanks to her resilience, Tiana not only survived the shooting spree but also overcame her own 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.
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 4 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 from her.
Related Content:
A killer on the run kidnaps a young woman, taking her a days-long car chase—but she won't give up until her she escapes and takes him down: The Case of Aundreah Maes
Credits
Written, directed & edited by Alexandre Gendron
Researched by Tiffany Loxton
Voiceover by William Akana
Produced by Alexandra Salois & Salim Sader
If you’d like to support the Kalamazoo community and survivors’ healing, check out the Forever Strong foundation: https://www.foreverstrongfoundation.org/
For more stories like this, subscribe to our YouTube here
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Sources
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