Dantzler 'asked me to pull over, talk'

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - She survived an attack by the worst mass murderer in Grand Rapids' history, and it was her 911 call that led to the beginning of the end that day.

April Swanson, a mother of three, said it was a chance encounter on July 7 with Rodrick Dantzler, a long-time friend who lived near her northeast side neighborhood.

She had just left school, where she is studying criminal justice, and was on Ann Street NE near Alpine Avenue about 7 p.m. -- four hours after Dantzler's seven victims were discovered.

He was in the back of a white SUV that pulled up next to her.

"He didn't look like himself," Swanson told 24 Hour News 8. "He just looked like a totally different person. He looked like just very panicked and very scared, I think that's why he asked me to pull over and that he wanted to talk to me."

She had already seen on TV that he was wanted for seven murders earlier that day. Instead of pulling over, she called 911.

"I talked to the dispatch lady and told her that the guy they were looking for just tried to pull me over; he wanted to stop and talk to me, but I wasn't going to stop, that I am gonna keep driving and let them know where I was heading to."

Until then, police believed Dantzler was driving a tan Lincoln Town Car, not knowing that he had already dumped that car on the city's southwest side.

Within moments, police were following the SUV, which was following April Swanson, who kept talking to the dispatcher.

"So, I kept driving down Ann Street, passing Monroe, went up to Plainfield, told the lady, the dispatcher, every direction I was going in," she said.

The SUV driver -- a friend of Dantzler's -- jumped from the moving car about where Plainfield Avenue NE turns to North Division Avenue. It's not clear how Dantzler was able to take over the wheel.

Then, they reached the heart of downtown, the SUV to Swanson's left.

"I was just strictly trying to drive and get out of the way, and that's when I heard him fire the gun."

At least two shots pierced a car window, then her left upper arm, shattering a bone, which took a foot-long metal plate and a dozen screws to put back together.

"I really felt no pain, I felt my arm go limp I could feel my clothes being saturated with blood," she said.

She says Dantzler might have killed her if not for the Grand Rapids police officer, Luke Nagtzaam, who rammed the SUV and exchanged gunfire with Dantzler. Two other officers in another patrol car also rammed the SUV.

Monday, at the police department, she met the officers and exchanged hugs with Nagtzaam.

"Thank God that that was his reaction to do that because he could have kept shooting at me and there's no telling, you know, I might not be here today."

Looking back, she believes Dantzler targeted her that day because, in that chance meeting, she had betrayed him.

"I think he shot me because of the relationship he and I had, that he found out that I was on the phone with police and that I had betrayed his trust," she said.

The feeling of betrayal -- it's what police say may have triggered the rampage: Rodrick Dantzler angry that his wife of more than 10 years was leaving him.

He killed his wife, Jennifer Heeren, their daughter, and his in-laws. He also killed an ex-girlfriend, her sister and the sister's daughter.

April Swanson says she was a long-time friend, never a girlfriend, but had seen Dantzler's temper.

"He was strictly a friend, somebody that we would just hang out with, play cards, maybe watch a movie with, hang out at the park," she said. "He did have a temper. He was quite anti-social if you were not in the group of friends. I was basically somebody he could trust. I was always somebody he could confide in."