KC neighborhood group wants liquor store shut down after double homicide: ‘Do something’
The blasts from the handguns lasted just seconds.
Only hours before, Roger Keyes, 36, of North Hyde Park had been at a neighborhood meeting discussing the constant violence, drug-dealing and drunkenness that neighbors insist flows from the nearby One Stop Liquor store, 3350 Troost Ave.
The owner disputes that his store, whose future is unclear, bears blame for troubles. But for months and even longer, the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association had been complaining to city officials, urging them to pull the store’s liquor license so it would be less of a draw to crime and those who create it. But they were told that authorities required solid proof that a business was at fault in order to take away a license.
Then, on Tuesday, at 11:03 p.m., two bodies, part of a double homicide, lay on the street outside Keyes’ house. Stray bullets had shattered his own downstairs window; a second bullet pierced the house and lodged into an upstairs wall.
As Keyes watched two bodies being taken away, he wondered: How much more proof does the city need?
“I think I can speak for the entire neighborhood: Do something,” said Keyes, an engineer who bought his home on Harrison Street just over two years ago and is on the association’s safety committee. “Do something. Hold yourselves accountable in some way for this environment.
“This is not something new. . . .It’s a gathering spot. They drink. They party. They hang out.”
He said customers urinate and defecate by the dumpters. Drunk, they stumble into the streets. Kansas City police said they have been called to the address 89 times in the last year alone.
“The drug activity is pretty relentless,” Keyes said. “I mean this area becomes a crime scene.”
‘Please take action’
Multiple videos over multiple weeks, captured on Keyes’ outdoor cameras, bear witness to what he says.
One video shows a person walking down the street firing in front of him. Another captures the rapid-fire trill of an automatic weapon. In a third, a gunman fires point blank into a car.
“These are just from the last two months,” he said.
Keyes barely slept following the double killing. That night, he emailed Jim Ready, the manager of Kansas City’s regulated industries division, whom Crispin Rea, his 4th district at-large councilman, had put him in touch with.
“Jim,” Keyes wrote at 1:30 a.m. after the killings, “Please take IMMEDIATE action on the One Stop. Two patrons of the One Stop were just brutally murdered this evening. . . just minutes after the One Stop closed. People were drinking, partying, etc. for hours at the One Stop, leading up to this tragedy.
“Bullets were sent flying through the neighborhood, narrowly missing someone who was just sitting inside their house, watching TV. The way this business is being run is completely unacceptable. These are exactly the kinds of things we are trying to prevent, by revoking the liquor license and shutting the business down.”
What can be done
But six days prior, on March 14, Ready in an email went to great lengths to explain to Keyes what his division could and couldn’t do.
In response to his and his neighbor’s concerns, he said, the city had already begun an inspection process, visiting the business at different times of the day, to see if the business broke ordinances that might possibly warrant a suspended or revoked license.
But even if ordinance violations are found, Ready noted, the division would first have to show the Liquor Control Board of Review that the city attempted to work with the business, giving it an opportunity to come into compliance before any disciplinary actions or hearings would take place.
“It’s also important to understand what a business is required to do and what cannot be held against them,” Ready wrote.
In general, he said, business are not responsible for what happens away their properties. He provided examples.
If a liquor store sells liquor to someone who leaves and drinks it on public property, the liquor store owner isn’t responsible.
If a customer buys, drinks and causes problems in the neighborhood and the business owner — once notified — no longer sells to the customer, “they have done the most they can do to prevent the violation for recurring.” Certainly, if they’re not made aware of the problems a customer causes, they’re also not liable, Ready said.
‘I don’t cause it’
That’s how One Stop’s owner, Jagtar Singh Hundal, sees it.
Speaking from behind protective glass, Hundal said he is fully aware of the shootings and troubles outside. He said he’s owned the business for eight years, leasing the building from its owner. (Public records show the building is owned by Raman Property LLC, with Swarnjit Singh as its registered agent).
“I mean people complain about it,” Hundal said of the crime in the area. “Legally, there’s nothing I can do. I don’t cause it. . . .It’s their own deals. It has nothing to do with me. Not this store. I mean, they come in and buy their stuff. But what they do outside, I’ve got no control over. . . .And it doesn’t just happen here. It happens everywhere in the inner cities.”
Hundal said he knew the victims of Tuesday night’s shooting.
“I didn’t close last night, but I knew both guys,” he said Wednesday. “They’d come in all the time and buy stuff. One’s a young kid, the other was an older guy.”
To Hundal’s way of thinking, the focus of the problem shouldn’t be placed on his liquor store. He points to the residents in some of the nearby public housing apartments two blocks away on East Armour Boulevard.
On that point, Hundal and Keyes partially agree. Keyes still sees the liquor store as a draw, but also recognizes that when trouble erupts it often happens on the blocks between the public housing apartments and the liquor store.
“I hate to bring public housing into the mix,” Keyes said, “but it is somewhat relevant here. . .Sometimes, through my yard, sometimes it’s just a constant flow of traffic. Sadly, sometimes, people addicted to drugs and alcohol, you know, go to the One Stop to get their fix, and things often turn out violent. And it’s very often teenagers, which is probably the saddest part.”
New license holder
Singh said that whatever happens in the future won’t be his problem. He’s leaving.
“I’m done in two months here,” he said. “I’m on a lease. Somebody else is going to take over. Too much of a headache here, anyway.”
Ready, with the city, told Keyes as much on Friday.
“I do have some very good news to share with you about this particular business,” he wrote. “When I learned (from Councilman Rea’s office) that there were problems with the business, I had staff reach out to the managing officer of the business to let them know about the issues the neighborhood was dealing with.”
The managing officer, who Ready said is an attorney who oversees multiple businesses with liquor licenses, contacted the building’s owner “who immediately proceeded with evicting the license holder.”
Ready said he was told that the license holder would be out by April 1, “which is ultimately good news for all concerned as it sounds like the license holder was indeed a problem.”
On Monday, one day before the shooting, Ready in an email also told Keyes that in the event that the license is sold to a new liquor store owner, he would be glad to set up a meeting between the new licensee and the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association.
“It would also be a good opportunity for the new license holder to explain how they will run their business in the future,” Ready said. “I would also explain to the new owner that they must operate their business as to not cause a nuisance to, or change in character of the residential / immediate area.”
Keyes, would rather there be no liquor store at all.
Before buying his home, he’d lived in the southern part of the neighborhood. He thought his new house might be a place he’d stay forever: three stories, a 1908 limestone and cedar shake shirtwaist, four bedrooms.
“I love Hyde Park. I love these beautiful houses. I like the community,” he said.
When he bought the house in the winter, the activity around the liquor store hadn’t yet emerged. As the weather warms it does. Now he thinks often of moving.
“All the time,” he said. “Spring comes, the weather warms up. Everybody gets out and this goes nuts. That’s when I’m like, ‘What have I got myself into?’”
The surest solution, he believes, is no liquor store.
“One hundred percent,” Keyes said. “I mean that’s unanimous. There would still be some problems. It wouldn’t say it would solve everything, but it would certainly solve the issues that literally bleed out in this residential area.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 11:06 AM.
