Dillon Davis

Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer

BATTLE CREEK Mich. — Abigail Kopf, the 14-year-old shot and critically wounded during an hours-long rampage in Kalamazoo County Feb. 20, is breathing on her own, according to postings by her mother and a family friend.

Her mother, Vickie Kopf, posted Sunday on her Facebook page that "they just removed Abigail's vent and she breathing on her own and she wiped off her own face."

And on the family-approved GoFundMe page a family friend, Martha Thawnghmung wrote Sunday that, "our hearts are full of joy right now as we celebrate a milestone for Abbie. The tube is out, she's breathing on her own. And she just wiped her own face with a towel."

Kalamazoo shootings: Father and son remembered

The Harper Creek Middle School seventh-grader remains a patient at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo. She was listed in serious condition Sunday night.

The alleged gunman, 45-year-old Uber driver Jason Dalton, is charged with shooting eight people, killing six of them, in a random spree in three locations in the county. Kopf was one of five shot in a Kalamazoo-area Cracker Barrel parking lot, and the only survivor.

About 350 people filled Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Battle Creek Sunday for a celebration of the life of Mary Jo Nye.

Nye's was the last funeral for the victims, but no one at the 80-minute service spoke Dalton's name. They only talked about Mary Jo Nye and about her love of teaching, of baking and Lake Michigan.

"She loved the shoreline," Chapel Hill Pastor Chad Parmalee said in his eulogy. "When she saw the lake she was reassured that things would be OK. For her the Lake Michigan shoreline was a place of reassurance and a place of peace."

Parmalee told those gathered that Nye loved to bake break and sew and make quilts and often gave them to others.

"She turned her skills into gifts," Parmalee said.

Nye also loved to teach, said Charles Crider, retired principal of Calhoun County Community High School, an alternative education school where Nye once taught.

But Nye was more than a teacher, Crider said.

"She challenged them to be their best," he said before asking more than 25 former students attending the service to stand.

On Saturday mourners remembered Mary Jo Nye's sister-in-law and former college roommate, 62-year-old Mary Nye. Her funeral drew about 100 people and several speakers, who recalled Nye's love of children, her dedication to her work and her "world-famous zucchini bread."

The funeral was held at the church where Mary Nye had worked since 2011. Before that, the Lansing native was a longtime branch manager for the Michigan Secretary of State — last working at the Northwest Berrien County office in Benton Harbor — and a master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

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"We come together and our hearts are deeply saddened," Immanuel Lutheran Pastor Jon Bendewald said during the day's opening prayer. "Father God, we're trying to wrap our minds around the events of last Saturday evening. Father God, we know your will is a gracious and holy will and we just don't have the answers we want.

"You have allowed to be taken some very beautiful people from this life."

At the time of the shooting, Mary, who also has been referred to as "Mary Lou," was visiting with Mary Jo Nye, as well as friends Barbara Hawthorne, 68, Dorothy "Judy" Brown, 74, and Kopf.

Besides Kopf, Tiana Carruthers, the first victim of the random shootings, continues to recover. She was at a playground late in the afternoon of Feb. 20 at her Richland Township apartment complex with her young daughter, a niece and three other children when a man pulled up to the curb in a silver-colored SUV and motioned for her to come over.

When Carruthers, 25, approached, the man — later identified as Uber driver Jason Dalton — mumbled, asked if she knew a woman by a certain name, then calmly pulled a gun out from his coat and shot her once near her shoulder, Carruthers' grandmother Phoenix Windwalker told the DetroitFree Press in an interview Tuesday morning.

Carruthers turned, screamed for the children to run and blocked them from the gunman with her body. She was shot at least two more times in the hip and leg area, before the gunman sped off, Windwalker said.

Family says woman shot by Kalamazoo gunman saved kids

Later, Richard, 53, and his son, Tyler, 17, both of Mattawan, were attacked and killed at a KIA car dealership. They were remembered at a service Saturday.

Contributing: Trace Christenson​, Battle Creek Enquirer, andRobert Allen and Katrease Stafford, DetroitFree Press. Follow Dillon Davis on Twitter: @DillonDavis