Kansas City fire truck driver got DWI after crashing into house with his pickup
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Firefighter Kerry Gentry pleaded guilty Dec. 9 to DWI after his pickup struck a house.
- Gentry resigned Nov. 17, 2024; got suspended sentence, 2 years’ probation.
- The case is among several involving Kansas City firefighters with DWI incidents.
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The KCFD Files
A series of stories highlights Kansas City Fire Department employees who have been charged with serious crimes — including fatal crashes, a felony drug case and multiple DWIs — and were allowed to remain on the job, some for years.
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Mike Canady did a double take when he arrived at his south Kansas City home after work on a hot and muggy July 2024 day.
“I was like, ‘What are these tire tracks in my yard?’” he said. “And then I looked over at my neighbor’s. The front part of the house is all brick. And it was smashed up pretty good.”
A 2005 Chevy Silverado pickup had veered off Red Bridge Road just east of the Kansas-Missouri state line and slammed into the house.
“It started in my yard and went all the way through to theirs,” Canady told The Star. “What was amazing to me, there were trees in between where he entered my yard and the house next door. He had to drive through those trees to hit the house. He must have really been swerving around.”
“He” was Kerry Gentry, at the time a fire apparatus operator with the Kansas City Fire Department. The resulting misdemeanor DWI conviction — his blood alcohol concentration was four times the legal limit — was his second since he began working for KCFD, according to court records.
Gentry’s case is among a series of examples of Kansas City firefighters with multiple DWIs, some of which have been charged as felonies.
In December, a fed-up Clay County judge sentenced longtime Kansas City firefighter John Speer to five years in prison after he repeatedly violated his probation in a DWI case.
Speer had six DWI cases on his record, three of them felonies. In a July 2023 arrest — just five months after a previous arrest — his minor children were riding with him and his speed was clocked at 87 mph.
In October, former Kansas City Fire Captain Christopher Siegel was sentenced to 60 days in jail and five years’ probation after pleading guilty to driving while intoxicated in Clay County in May 2023 — his fourth DWI since 2016.
Siegel, who remained on the job for more than 16 months after his arrest, also was ordered to finish serving three more years of probation from a 2021 felony DWI case. He had violated his probation in that case several times.
And in August, Antonino Giarraputo pleaded guilty to DWI after being cited in Platte County in October 2024, just seven months after he was hired by the Kansas City Fire Department. Court records showed it wasn’t his first DWI.
After Giarraputo was sentenced to two years of probation and 10 days of “shock time” in the Platte County Detention Center, the judge granted his request for work release during those 10 days so he could keep his firefighter job.
Gentry, 51, did not respond to requests for comment about his case and his attorney, Laura O’Sullivan, said in an email to The Star on Thursday that “we have no comment.”
Gentry parted ways with the fire department four months after the crash.
“Kerry Gentry is no longer an employee of KCFD,” Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins, a fire department spokesman, told The Star in an email. “He resigned his position on November 17, 2024.”
Information obtained in response to a Missouri Sunshine Law request shows Gentry had been with KCFD for nearly 20 years, with an annual salary of $102,290 at the time he left.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow we reported the KCFD project
For the past several months, The Star has been rolling out an ongoing project revealing how KCFD firefighters with criminal records — including violent offenses — have remained on the job, often shielded from serious discipline by a powerful labor union.
To streamline the reporting process and provide a better picture of how widespread the issue might be, The Star built a custom AI tool that automatically searched public court records for hundreds of names of current and former Kansas City Fire Department employees. It flagged matches with criminal cases and provided links to the case numbers.
Reporters could then look up the cases and verify that the individuals worked for KCFD. The tool saved reporters an enormous amount of time compared to using only traditional search methods.
Among the stories that were developed as a result:
–A firefighter charged with sodomy and rape in 2023 who then pleaded guilty to harassment and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
–A KCFD captain who remained on the job for more than a year after being arrested a fourth time for drunken driving.
–A former longtime Kansas City firefighter who assaulted a fellow firefighter at Station 27, 6600 E. Truman Road, last year in an incident that co-workers said ended when they pulled him off the victim.
–A fire captain facing charges of first-degree harassment and assault for allegedly striking a fellow firefighter forcefully in the rectum, causing severe pain that required medical treatment.
It’s important to note that AI didn’t write a single word of these stories. That was the work of the reporters. But what it did was help us take a broad idea and quickly gather evidence to support it. And that process allowed the journalists to focus on deeper, more human reporting.
Readers can watch for more stories from this project in the coming weeks.
The crash off Red Bridge Road
The Kansas City Police Department report shows that officers were sent to the Red Bridge Road address at 2:34 p.m. on July 10, 2024, “in response to a vehicle that had crashed into a house.”
The homeowner was inside the building at the time of the crash, the report said. She told an officer that “she was sitting in her living room when, in a sudden and unexpected moment, she heard a very loud crash sound, and her house began to shake and move.
“(She) then realized a black truck had crashed into her house.”
The officer then contacted a man who had witnessed the incident, the report said. He told the officer that the pickup “was traveling at a high rate of speed, swerved to the left, and struck the house.”
“As he approached the vehicle, he observed the driver to be intoxicated and had a strong alcohol smell on his person.”
The witness said the driver’s speech “was very incoherent and unclear.”
The officer could not take a statement from the driver, the report said, because he had been transported to a hospital by the Kansas City Fire Department prior to the officer’s arrival.
The crash caused “extensive damage” to the house and front-end damage to the pickup, the officer wrote in the report.
Another officer went to the hospital to determine the extent of the driver’s injuries, the report said. That officer said the driver “had severe injuries to his face, head, and neck and (he) could not get a statement from the driver due to his injuries.”
Police later obtained Gentry’s medical records through a subpoena and found that he had a blood alcohol concentration of .319% after the crash, according to the probable cause statement supporting the DWI charge. The legal limit for driving a motor vehicle is .08%.
Court records show that Gentry had a prior DWI conviction in Cass County in September 2010.
Guilty plea and probation
Gentry was charged with DWI in Jackson County Circuit Court on April 1, 2025. The class B misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
In an Aug. 25, 2025, motion, his attorney requested a reduction of his $10,000 bond, saying he wasn’t a flight risk and that it wasn’t needed to ensure his appearance at future court hearings.
“Mr. Gentry is a lifelong resident of (the) Kansas City area, having served as a firefighter for many years,” the motion said, adding that he has “strong family ties to the community.”
The judge modified the bond to a personal recognizance bond on Sept. 16.
Gentry pleaded guilty to the DWI charge on Dec. 9 and received a suspended imposition of sentence and two years’ probation. He also was ordered to complete a Substance Abuse Traffic Offender Program and attend a Victim Impact Panel.
Court records show that Gentry also faces charges in Kansas City Municipal Court in connection with the 2024 incident. He was charged on Oct. 15, 2024, with operating a motor vehicle in a careless and imprudent manner.
Gentry pleaded not guilty to that charge on Aug. 18, 2025. The case has been repeatedly continued, and the next hearing is scheduled for April 6.
