Reality Check dispatch: 13-year-old’s death ensnares small Kansas town
Editor’s note: The following is from today’s Reality Check newsletter, published weekly on Wednesdays. You can sign up here to get them delivered to your inbox.
Hi Star readers,
The tiny community of Pleasanton, Kansas, is looking for answers as they grieve the shocking death of 13-year-old Airen Andula. But county police say they can’t be the ones to bring Andula’s friends and family closure.
Andula, a soft-spoken but outgoing boy who loved Legos and Hot Wheels cars, was reported missing on the evening of Dec. 21, 2025. The next day he was found dead in a creek bed in Bates County, Missouri — it’d later be determined he died from “multiple dog bite injuries” — according to police.
On Dec. 22, a Pleasanton man allegedly called the Bates County Sheriff’s Office and told officials the boy was dead and led deputies to his body, according to court records.
Damon B. Leonard, 47, was charged in Missouri with abandoning a corpse — and he has so many deep ties to the Linn County community, sheriff James Akes said, that the sheriff’s office has had to excuse itself from investigating Andula’s death.
Leonard has also been charged in Linn County with interference with law enforcement and having a vicious dog at large. Meanwhile, the investigation into Andula’s death has passed to the Kansas City, Kansas, police department.
And after two tight-lipped weeks, KCKPD confirmed yesterday that Andula’s official cause of death was fatal injuries caused by multiple dog bites.
Here’s more on what we know — and don’t — about the boy’s death, chronicled by The Star’s Laura Bauer.
Elsewhere in the metro…
✅ From eight-day-old cooked pork, missing hand soap and “black build up,” these KC-area restaurants had some of the most health code violations last week.
✅ A Black KCPD sergeant said she was put in a chokehold and sexually harassed at work, she alleges in a lawsuit claiming “an ongoing pattern and practice of race discrimination.”
✅ The funding package Kansas officials promised the Chiefs on relies on STAR bonds — and it costs more than twice the total of all 23 other projects these bonds have bankrolled since 1999.
✅ It’s been more than a year since this Wyandotte County developer pledged to bring the Indian Springs mall back to life. Why has development come to a halt and will it restart?
If you have a question about your local government or a tip about what else we should look into, please email iarougheti@kcstar.com.
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