How did police miss body of KC highway shooter in ‘thoroughly searched’ home?
After a string of shootings on Kansas City roadways and a standoff at the suspected shooter’s home in Independence last week, the search for Oscar Sanchez-Munoz lingered for days.
So, too, did the question of how the alleged shooter evaded law enforcement.
As a search for the man intensified, for more than a week, it appears the man’s body lay under debris in the basement of the home in the 700 block of South Brookside Avenue.
Police said they had “thoroughly” searched Sanchez-Munoz’s home following the June 16 shootings and hadn’t found him. Investigators and police dogs went through the residence after a fire that broke out in the residence was extinguished, police said.
As police continued to look for Sanchez-Munoz, who they said had killed one man and injured four others in the shootings, Sanchez-Munoz’s family members returned to the home to clear away debris left by the chaotic evening, and they smelled a “distinct odor” that led them to search further, said Capt. Jake Becchina, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Police Department.
On Wednesday afternoon, they found human remains that police believe to be Sanchez-Munoz.
“This home was very thoroughly searched,” Becchina emphasized on Wednesday evening. “I can completely understand it raises the question, ‘How could this happen?’”
Becchina said federal law enforcement, fire officials, and cadaver and search and rescue dogs had been involved in the search of the home. Police had worked processing the scene on Wednesday and Thursday last week, he said.
Becchina said when police released information about Sanchez-Munoz on Wednesday, June 17, “We were confident that all of the survivable places in this house had been searched, and he was not located. Some of that is what led us to kind of pivot to notifying the public, asking the public’s help. This operation, this search could have continued for a long period of time. Obviously, it did, more than a week.”
Becchina said there had been “several feet” of water in the home’s basement on the night of the standoff and fire last week and said that when investigators were processing the scene the next day, there was some water remaining in the basement. He also said it was “one of the most congested basements I’ve seen in my 23-plus-year police career” and said part of it had collapsed.
“The family had been coming, working on the recovery effort here trying to kind of go through the rubble and the damage, the water damage, the fire damage, the collapse damage,” he said. “They’ve been in there several times. They’ve been in the basement several times.”
Becchina said the body that was found Wednesday was wearing clothing consistent with what the alleged shooter was wearing on June 16, the night of the highway shootings.
Police were waiting for a medical examiner to confirm the identity of the person, as well as their cause and manner of death, he said.
End of a manhunt
The discovery of the body marked the conclusion of a remarkable manhunt that stretched over several days after Sanchez-Munoz was accused of firing shots along a stretch that included Interstate 670, Interstate 70 and Truman Road on June 16.
In the highway shootings on June 16, an Uber driver taking fans to the Argentina-Algeria World Cup match was injured. A woman who had just left work and was heading to pick up a family member heard a noise as she was exiting Interstate 70 and was shocked to find she had been shot in the leg.
Jeremy Keenan, the man who died, was found in a vehicle that crashed along Truman Road. He had been shot and was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Police responded to the Independence home, where they said Sanchez-Munoz barricaded himself. Becchina said Wednesday that the cause of the fire that broke out in the home was still under investigation.
Police also linked Sanchez-Munoz to a June 11 shooting in Kansas City, Kansas, where another vehicle was struck by gunfire.
No one was injured in that incident, but the shooting set off an alert to officers in the metro.
