‘Heart of a lion’: Family, city leaders mourn 4-year-old shot and killed in KC
More than 100 friends and family members, including children and grandmothers, gathered Wednesday at Swope Park to pay respect to a “happy baby” who loved dancing, survived open-heart surgery and wanted to be the next Michael Jordan.
They prayed and released blue and gold balloons in honor of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot in his sleep about 2:30 a.m. Monday at the Citadel Apartments on Bushman Road. Police have not made any arrests in the shooting but said they think the apartment was targeted.
The phrase “LeGendary” adorned many T-shirts his loved ones passed out. The shirts also featured images of LeGend throughout his short life. In one, he walked at the Kansas City Heart and Stroke Walk his family attended each year. Another showed him wrapped in tubes at 4 months old after getting through his first open-heart surgery.
Diagnosed with pulminary regurgitation, LeGend had been awaiting a second heart operation. He was fun-loving, said his mother, Charron Powell. Because of his strength and energy, Powell often said her son had “the heart of a lion.”
“He lived up to his name,” Powell said. “He was a legend. He was a lot of joy in a small package.”
When she looks at her many photos of LeGend, Patrice Turner, his great aunt, said she will remember his big smile and love of tickles. Even as a baby, the boy found ways to reassure his family during his surgery, Turner said.
“He would squeeze hard and let you know, ‘I’m gonna survive this,’” she said. “And that baby came out of that, and he was strong.”
When LeGend played sports, his grandmother Kathryn Turner said, no one could tell he had heart issues. He moved fast down a court or field, didn’t mind being jostled and wanted to try playing football like one of his cousins, she said.
Each year his family participated in the Heart Walk to help people with heart defects like his. LeGend participated with the same energy as the others.
“He strutted right on in there,” Turner said.
LeGend always talked about going to the Heart Walk and was excited to attend this year’s in mid-September, Powell said. She encouraged everyone at the vigil, and anyone who wanted to honor LeGend, to donate if they could.
Turner saw her grandson often at family picnics and other get-togethers. He greeted her with tight hugs and kisses on the cheek. She planned to give him a football next Christmas.
Now, she’ll never get that chance.
LeGend was the youngest homicide victim in Kansas City this year.
“Whoever did it was nothing but a coward,” Turner said. “If you got a beef with somebody, beef with them. Why do you have to drag a baby into it?”
‘Enough is enough’
Earlier in the day, city officials and community leaders gathered outside the apartment complex where LeGend was killed, urging anyone with information to step forward.
“I, like everybody else, am getting exasperated,” Councilman Lee Barnes, 5th District at-large, told reporters, according to a livestream posted by KCTV5 News. “This is disheartening.”
Barnes called spraying gunshots into an apartment not only violent, but reckless. The community should not stand for it, he said.
“Bullets have no eyes,” Barnes said.
Linda Manlove-Braxton, of the nearby Citadel Homeowners Association, said if citizens are calling for the police to hold their “bad apples” accountable, as they have during recent protests, the community must report its criminals as well.
“We cannot harbor these kind of people,” Manlove-Braxton said, noting the association was thinking of LeGend’s family and the relatives of other homicide victims “traumatized by this ongoing plague in our community.”
Several officials, including Councilwoman Ryana Parks-Shaw, of the 5th District, said LeGend was doing what any child his age should be at 2:30 a.m: simply sleeping, getting his rest.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said he planned to continue to push for what he called common-sense gun legislation. He also urged residents who know anyone thinking about picking up a firearm to tell them to put it down, to “get out of that life.”
“We see too many people who end up dead,” he said. “We see too many people who are ending up in prison.”
LeGend was one of 98 people killed in Kansas City so far this year — the most ever reported at this time of year in the city’s history, according to data maintained by The Star, which includes police shootings. Most have been killed by gunfire.
The Kansas City Police Department on Tuesday released footage of a suspect vehicle in LeGend’s killing, though a department spokesperson acknowledged the video was “not the best.”
Police do not know the make, model or color of the vehicle seen in the video, Deputy Chief Karl Oakman said.
The department asked anyone with identifying information of the vehicle, such as its plate number or who it may belong to, to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.
Someone in the city knows who drives that vehicle, Oakman said.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “We will get you.”
At the gathering, Rosilyn Temple, who leads Kansas City’s chapter of Mothers in Charge, spoke the names of other slain children, including 3-year-old Damiah White, who along with her mother, Myeisha Turner, 27, was killed in 2013.
More recently, Brian Bartlett, 8, was fatally shot in August when 30 bullets ripped into his mother’s home as he slept, making him the youngest homicide victim in 2019. His slaying remains unsolved.
“No one is safe in this community,” Temple said Wednesday.
Gun violence will be the subject of a new, statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.
To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 8:49 AM with the headline "‘Heart of a lion’: Family, city leaders mourn 4-year-old shot and killed in KC."
