KC students at bus stop saw police kill Northland suspect: ‘Thought we were getting shot’

Kaylee Gangestad’s Friday started as any day for a high school sophomore should start.

Get ready for school, tell her parents goodbye, lock the door and head for the bus stop with her neighbors at the end of the road, roughly 50 feet from her front door, to head to Park Hill South High School.

But the morning soon took a turn.

Less than 100 feet from her home, she and other students witnessed law enforcement officers shoot and kill George C. Manning III, 43, who had been sought in two homicides and the abduction of a 5-year-old child in Kansas City’s Northland.

Officers with the Kansas City Police Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security saw Manning walking with a gun along Northwest Vivion Road, said Cpl. Justin Howard, a spokesman with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, during a morning news conference.

As the students waited at the bus stop on NW Saint Joe Boulevard, they heard tires screech nearby on Vivion Road and gunshots ring out. When they heard the gunfire, they ran to their home.

The students and Kaylee’s mother, Teather Gangestad, said police were shooting in the area of their homes.

“We thought we were getting shot,” Kaylee said. “We went from confusion to run and we pounded on the door.”

Kaylee was joined at the bus stop by neighbors Alex Matney, Nathan Smith and their sister.

“All I see is the cop car,” Nathan said. “I don’t even have time to react before I hear, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We literally just ran into the house.”

Alex, a senior, said he saw muzzle flashes from gunfire before he ran into the house. Gangestad, who housed the teenagers during the chaos, thought the children were the people being shot.

“It was like machine guns going off, sounding like it is in our front yard,” Gangestad said. Everyone in the house lay on the floor until the gunfire ended.

“I just knew my kids were being taken out. It was the worst experience.”

Ashton Danner, who lives at the end of the street, said her children heard gunshots inside the home before they went to elementary school.

She said her son realized he heard gunshots as they passed the crime scene on the way to school. Her daughter was scared, but she reassured her before she went to school.

“We don’t have nothing to worry about,” Danner told her daughter. “That’s why we have cops. They protect us.”

Manning was sought by law enforcement as a suspect in the shooting death the night before of a woman at a local car wash, officials said. Police suspected that Manning then drove the victim’s car to unincorporated Platte County and shot two more people, killing a boy and seriously injuring a woman, and abducting a child.

Police said the child was released to family members safe and unharmed.

Around 7:30 a.m., officers spotted Manning walking along Northwest Vivion Road near Northwest Waukomis Drive, where the shooting occurred.

After the shooting, the bus couldn’t reach the high school students because of the crime scene, so they stayed home from school. Kaylee, a sophomore, said she lives with post-traumatic stress and anxiety and incidents like this make it worse.

“It’s scary to think about, scary to witness, scary to go through. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Kaylee said.

All of the residents said they hear occasional gunshots at night, but their neighborhood is relatively quiet. Gangestad said she would like more transparency because law enforcement did not contact her or her neighbors about the incident.

“Not one person said, get inside kids or do anything,” she said. “Literally, they were fight or flight, running in, thinking they’re being shot at.”

The neighbors also heard that Manning may have been hiding in the woods near their home. They hope their neighborhood returns to its quiet state so they can feel safe in their homes again.

“Sucks that this was the ending for him,” Danner said about Manning. “But I’m glad that he can’t hurt anybody else.”