Waldo residents angry, frustrated from dealing with car thefts, gunfire on their street
As Marlene Standley gives a tour around her Waldo home on Friday, she walks past stylish decor in one room that reminds her of the beach, past flamingos that pattern the walls in another.
She points to spots where bullets cut into the space she’s made her own over the years.
“I’ve never felt scared in my house, and … look back here,” she says, sitting on a couch in her living room, gesturing to a bullet hole in the corner.
She found bullet fragments by her front door. From what she could determine, bullets struck her house in four places early in the morning of April 17.
She woke around 3:30 a.m. to the sound of rapid-fire gunshots and then heard squealing tires outside her home in the 7900 block of Jefferson Street. She later learned that a neighbor had interrupted a group breaking into vehicles, including a neighbor’s Corvette. The group’s response was to spray gunfire at him back in the direction of homes, including Standley’s.
The incident rattled residents of the street and left them to deal with repairs to their homes and vehicles.
One resident, Megan Hogan, pointed to a tree in her front yard that blocked the path of a bullet headed toward her daughter’s room.
“The whole thing was scary, but it’s more scary to think about what could’ve happened,” she said. “We’ve got children, we have families in these homes. They didn’t really even think about it.”
Police responded and collected around 20 shell casings in the street, Hogan said.
“The police were actually like, ‘Well, the good thing is they probably won’t be back,’” she said with a wry smile.
The group did return early Thursday — a week later — and made off with the Corvette they’d broken into the week before, residents of the street said.
After her dog barked around 3 a.m., Hogan watched as one person worked at the car in her neighbor’s driveway as others fanned out and trained guns on the front door of the home, ready to fire at anyone who would come out to check on the car alarm, she said.
The man whose Corvette was stolen spoke to The Star but requested his name not be used in this story. He said he just had windows fixed on his Corvette and another vehicle from the break-ins the prior week.
“If they would have fired like they did the last time,” he said, “I might’ve been screwed.”
Hogan gave a police dispatcher a play-by-play of the situation over the phone, hoping her neighbor wouldn’t open his front door and that police would respond in time. Officers arrived after the group had departed and about 15 minutes after she called, she said.
“They knew what they were doing and how to do it and get out of here quickly,” she said of the car thieves.
Neighbors expressed frustration to The Star over those who struck a bit of fear into their street, over what they felt was a slow response from police, over the guns, the crime that has been reported in their section of town. Some on the street are ready to move.
“I’ve always felt safe, I’ve always talked Kansas City up; it’s a great place to live, come visit me,” Standley said. “Now I can’t have my grandkids spend the night. I’m not going to put them at risk.”
Capt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, confirmed officers responded to both incidents on Jefferson Street.
In the earlier one, on April 17, officers were called to an assault in which the victim reported a group had shot in his direction before they fled the area. Police found multiple vehicles had been broken into and found evidence of gunfire.
Becchina said police are investigating the stolen vehicle and said there was no suspect description that was publicly available.
