Trace Christenson

Battle Creek Enquirer

Autopsies on six victims in the Saturday night shooting in Kalamazoo were completed by late afternoon the next day, the medical examiner said Wednesday.

Dr. Joyce deJong, medical examiner for Kalamazoo County and several other counties in southwestern Michigan, including Calhoun, said she and 16 other staff members were in place in their offices at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine in downtown Kalamazoo to begin the examinations of the victims, including three from Battle Creek.

Police said six people were killed and two others were shot and seriously wounded in three locations in Kalamazoo County. Jason Dalton, 45, of Kalamazoo has been charged with six counts of open murder, two counts of assault with intent to murder and eight counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

DeJong said she and three other pathologists, two anthropologists, three investigators, two administrative assistants, five other assistants and a security guard were at the laboratory by 2 a.m. and worked through the day and had completed the examinations of all six bodies by 5 p.m.

DeJong said the office has a protocol when at least five people are killed in the same incident and an on-call medical examiner is notified.

"It started a cascade of phone calls and we called in the entire staff," she said. "We use the trigger of five people from the same incident when he activates everyone."

DeJong said everyone except a staff member who also works in a hospital emergency room came to the office.

Initial reports were between nine and 12 fatalities, she said, but early in a multiple-fatality situation, "it's common that numbers are all over the place. In the beginning as it unfolds and we didn't know what we had but we knew we had a lot."

Staff investigators went to the scenes to gather information used in the final reports as well as to coordinate transportation of the bodies to the office when they were released by police, deJong said.

Because four of the women were shot at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant at 5581 Cracker Barrel Drive near I-94 and Ninth Street in Texas Township southwest of Kalamazoo, positive identification was complicated and by law couldn't be made visually.Dental records to assist in the identification were not available in some cases until Monday, when positive identifications were released.

Three police officers, one from the Michigan State Police and two from the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, attended the autopsies as part of the investigation.

She said the examinations will not only confirm the causes of death but will be used to determine angles of fire and other information sought by investigators.

DeJong said preliminary information will be provided to authorities but that a final report on each of the autopsies won't be completed for about a month.

She said laboratory tests must be completed and "everything must be compiled and we have to make sure everything is accurate and makes sense."

Contact Trace Christenson at 966-0685 or tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow him on Twitter: @TSChristenson