‘Couldn’t believe it was happening’: KCK residents describe fatal deputy shooting
When Emily Dickson finally made it home Saturday evening, her front window was busted in and neighbors told her they thought someone died near her front lawn.
Although she wasn’t home during the standoff between law enforcement and a suspect who allegedly shot and killed a Wyandotte County deputy, stories swirling on her street and in the news have helped her piece together what happened at the house next door.
As of Monday afternoon, Dickson still wasn’t sure whether someone punched through the window, or if her frightened dog, who heard numerous rounds of shots fired throughout the afternoon, tried to break free.
Two days after Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Deputy Elijah Ming was shot and killed while helping a woman trying to move out of a home in Kansas City, Kansas’s Argentine neighborhood, residents living on that same street told The Star they had no reason to believe the home that their new neighbors occupied would, within a matter of weeks, become a murder scene.
As law enforcement approached the home Saturday afternoon, another person inside the home, later identified as 38-year-old Shawn Harris, allegedly fired at Ming, 34, wounding him. Ming later died at an area hospital. Harris, injured in an exchange of gunfire that followed, barricaded himself in the home for hours before turning himself into police.
Nearby residents say this isn’t the neighborhood they once knew.
‘A really quiet neighborhood’
“This used to be a really quiet neighborhood,” said Dallas Lawver, who has lived in his home on South 30th Street for more than 18 years. “Really about the only time you would see or hear anything would be when older folks would, in these conditions, have issues in the heat.”
Lawver said he and his family were sitting in their front living room when they heard the first four or five shots fired. He said didn’t think much of it initially, saying he’s grown familiar with shots going off in the area in recent years. But they weren’t usually this close by, he said.
That’s when a neighbor driving up the street told them that an officer had been shot. The family watched police units and ambulances pack their street from their front porch for a while before officers cautioned them to stay inside.
Lawver keeps to himself, he told The Star. He hadn’t spoken with either of the neighbors, who he said started living in the house up the street a few months ago. He said he’s concerned about violence in the area, and he attributed it to a perceived decrease in police presence in that part of town.
“Our concern has gotten greater,” he said. “... I wouldn’t say I feel comfortable.”
Emmanuel Ruiz-Ramirez, a student that lives a house down from Lawver, said he found out about the shooting when a friend asked him if he was safe. Ruiz-Ramirez wasn’t home at the time, but his parents were. They stayed inside their home throughout the duration of the incident, he said.
Ruiz-Ramirez, like other neighbors that spoke with The Star, used that same word when they described their neighborhood, calling it “quiet.”
It was a place that’s not immune to crime, but also a place where people mind their own, Ruiz-Ramirez said.
And although Saturday’s shooting was the first time a serious incident occurred so close to their home since they moved there in 2018, Ruiz-Ramirez said he’s worried what any future violence could mean for his family.
“My parents bought this house, so they’re going to be living here for the rest of their lives,” he said. “And I don’t want anything bad to happen, again, near them.”
Randy Everson was in his back yard when he heard shots fired and what he later determined was an injured officer crying out in pain. He ran to the front yard and watched as officers directed gunfire toward the house across the street from him.
An officer would later direct him to go indoors.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening,” he said. “I was looking out the front window.”
Everson watched as law enforcement and emergency vehicles, flashing lights and police tape lined his street.He said he sympathized with responding officers.
“I feel bad for them having to just watch their friend die, and there’s nothing they could do,” he said.
