‘You think about all the what-ifs’: Independence home jolted by stray New Year’s bullet
Just minutes into 2025 as Stacie Matuszeski was in her bathroom getting ready for bed, she was jolted by what sounded like shattering glass. She ran out of the room, and then returned to investigate.
Had something come in through the window? Did something explode?
Her son identified a bullet hole in the ceiling of their Independence home, and together they found a bullet in the bottom of the bathtub. Matuszeski realized she had been just a couple of feet away from the path of the bullet as it crashed through their house.
“It scared the world out of me,” she told The Star Friday.
No one was injured, the hole in the roof was eventually plugged, and her family was left holding a bullet fragment and a harrowing story to start the year.
“Thank you, Lord, nobody was in that shower,” she said.
Around midnight as people celebrated the dawn of the new year, the family heard gunshots and fireworks near their home in a residential neighborhood off East 35th Street.
“Over here, it’s so prevalent,” she said of the shots.
It was a bit later, at 12:39 a.m. Wednesday, she said the bullet struck the house. Her husband investigated the roof and found the bullet’s entry point.
Matuszeski posted about the incident as a warning in an Independence Facebook group, and the post quickly buzzed with reactions.
“Happy New Year!” she wrote alongside photos of the bullet and the hole in her ceiling. “PSA for next year. What goes up definitely comes down. This bullet flew through my bathroom ceiling shortly after midnight. Practice gun safety!!”
A spokesman for the Independence Police Department didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story Friday.
From 6 p.m. New Year’s Eve to 6 a.m. New Year’s Day, the Kansas City Police Department received 109 calls reporting gunshots and had 122 ShotSpotter activations, which corresponded to 697 rounds fired, said Sgt. Phil DiMartino, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department. ShotSpotter is a tool used by the department to track gunshots in the city.
Over the previous New Year’s holiday, the department had 185 calls for shots and 187 ShotSpotter activations with 1,180 rounds fired, DiMartino said.
During a year-end press conference ahead of the holiday Tuesday, Kansas City officials urged people not to fire weapons, pointing to the potentially deadly consequences.
“To whatever extent you have influence over friends, family or neighbors, if you hear them talking about getting a gun to shoot, please talk them out of it,” said Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves. “That conversation could save a life.”
Matuszeski said she hoped something good might come out of the attention to her story and the problem of celebratory gunfire.
She noted the story of 11-year-old Blair Shanahan Lane, who died after she was struck by a stray bullet in Kansas City on Independence Day in 2011. That tragedy was the basis for “Blair’s Law,” a measure aimed at stopping celebratory gunfire that was signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson last year.
In Florida, police are investigating the death of a 10-year-old girl who was struck by celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Day in Miami.
“This heartbreaking incident serves as a devastating reminder that what goes up must come down,” the Miami-Dade Police Department said in a social media post Wednesday. “Bullets fired into the air can take innocent lives.”
Said Matuszeski: “Somebody like Blair’s parents, they can’t get her back. That changed their whole world.”
“You think about all the what-ifs,” she said. “And then you think about parents who have lost somebody or other people, not just parents. My heart even more goes out to them. In that split instant, it’s over.”
