Life in prison for pair who kidnapped and killed a Kansas City man
Two men who kidnapped and killed a Kansas City man in 2016 were sentenced Wednesday to multiple life terms in federal prison without parole.
Raynal King, 27, and Howard Ross III, 23, were sentenced in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, where a jury in February found them guilty of kidnapping resulting in death, using a firearm to commit murder during a kidnapping, carjacking resulting in death, using a firearm to commit murder in relation to the carjacking and being felons in possession of firearms.
Jaime Patton, 28, was found fatally shot in September 2016 in the 13700 block of Holmes Road.
Patton worked for the Belton School District as a technology department technician.
According to court testimony and documents, Ross and King planned for several days to kidnap someone to get money so King could make a $200 car payment.
Patton had just left a hospital where he was helping to care for a relative and was driving a Jeep Patriot when he was kidnapped at gunpoint.
His captors drove him to ATMs and demanded he withdraw money for them. But when he couldn’t remember his PIN number, Ross shot him in the thigh to “make sure he (Patton) knew they were not playing around,” according to prosecutors.
As they drove around, Patton attempted to jump out of the moving car, was shot several times and left “to die on the side of the road,” prosecutors said.
Investigators later recovered surveillance video from several ATM locations that showed someone driving Patton’s Jeep with Patton in the passenger seat.
Near one of the ATMs, video captured someone believed to be the same person later driving a silver Pontiac.
Patton’s Jeep was later found abandoned near 83rd Street and Brooklyn Avenue.
Several days after the murder, Kansas City police arrested King after they spotted him driving the silver Pontiac.
King gave a statement to police and implicated Ross.
When they searched King’s apartment, police found the keys to the Jeep and a debit card belonging to Patton. They also found photos of Ross holding the same model gun used to kill Patton.
Prosecutors said in court documents that both King and Ross had a history of committing violent crimes and both deserved to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
“While both defendants may have had different roles in the offense, both acted with full knowledge of the violent crimes they were committing and carried out these crimes with no remorse or respect for human life,” prosecutors said. “Both defendants are equally culpable in the torture and murder of the victim for his money and his property.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2018 at 4:58 PM.