Leavenworth man charged with murder in January shooting that killed family man from KCK
A Leavenworth man was charged last month for the January killing of a 41-year-old Kansas City, Kansas, man.
Daniel Garrett VanBebber, 27, was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Robert Alaniz, according to court records.
VanBebber is being held at the Wyandotte County Detention Center on $250,000 bond and was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning.
On Jan. 10, officers with the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department responded to a shooting call at 2:40 a.m. in a neighborhood on South 37th Street, just south of Shawnee Drive. When officers arrived, they found Alaniz inside the home. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Alaniz’s death was the city’s first homicide of 2022. In 2021, there were 51 homicides reported in the city, according to data tracked by The Star.
Alicia Alaniz, his younger sister, described Alaniz as a protective older brother and a massive Kansas City Chiefs fan who watched every game on five TVs in his bedroom.
Born two days before Halloween, he was obsessed with horror-movies and Halloween-themed parties and movies, once making his mother buy him a sweater similar to Freddy Krueger’s from “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” Alicia Alaniz previously told The Star.
Alaniz also made it a priority to take care of their mother in the more than three years she had been in remission from Stage 3 gastric cancer. Though their mom had surgery to remove the tumor, the cancer spread to her lymph nodes and is now in her bone marrow, Alicia Alaniz said. Robert always made sure to plan the meals after their mom’s treatments.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 11:42 AM.
