In case of 23-year-old man found dead in KC parking lot, no new clues since 2002

The abandoned parking lot where Adrian Harrison’s body was found nearly 15 years ago hasn’t changed much. A few businesses have come and gone since then from the surrounding industrial area in Kansas City.

Few workers remain there who remember the Monday morning on Dec. 30, 2002, when an employee found Harrison dead about 8 a.m. inside an old guard station in the parking lot at East 11th Street and Elmwood Avenue.

Harrison was 23 years old and the father of two. One daughter was just 2 months old when Harrison died, another about a year old.

Harrison had grown up in Kansas City, Kan., the youngest of four children in a house on Tennison Street. He was the smartest of the four children, said his mother, Careita Harrison.

“He was a good person,” she said recently in an interview.

As a teenager, Harrison began to run with a tough crowd and he started getting into trouble.

People liked Harrison, said his sister, Allona Harrison. He was funny and articulate, a charmer and a bit of a ladies’ man.

Allona Harrison said she believes there are people who know what happened but haven’t told police.

“It still hurts. I just feel like he never had a voice,” she said.

“I just have to have faith that, if no one is ever brought to justice, they will have to answer for it one day,” she said. “Maybe they are out there living their lives, never knowing when there will be a knock on the door and they’ll have to answer for it.”

Harrison had last been seen in Kansas several days before his body was discovered.

Police never publicly said how Harrison died, but they did classify his death as a homicide. Back then, police said they thought he was killed elsewhere before his body was left in the parking lot.

The case remains unsolved, with no new developments since 2002.

Kansas City police have asked anyone with information about Harrison’s death to call the Cold Case Squad at 816-234-5136.

This story was originally published July 16, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "In case of 23-year-old man found dead in KC parking lot, no new clues since 2002."