‘Let it go’: Series of arguments and fights led up to KCK father’s fatal stabbing

One more time on his last night at home, Robert R. Tichenor went back to a neighbor’s apartment, determined to resolve a hostile misunderstanding that had erupted when the Kansas City, Kan., father of four just wanted to bring his oldest daughter home.

“I told him to let it go,” his fiancée and the mother of his children, Tracy Lewis, said.

Their daughter was home safely. But an apparent argument with two men — strangers to him who were in the neighbor’s home — didn’t feel settled for the 32-year-old man. One of the men had bitten him and he was fuming, Lewis said.

The last trip ended with Tichenor getting stabbed in the heart. He died at a hospital two days later and police are investigating his death as a homicide.

Tichenor, who leaves behind children ages 10, 8, 4 and 5 months, was an auto mechanic of rural Indiana roots, said his father, Robert D. Tichenor of Shelbyville, Ind. The son went by the nickname “Bubby.”

“We’re from the country where you deal with fistfights and whoever wins, you shake hands and it’s over,” the elder Tichenor said. “Now everyone seems to bring out guns and knives.”

The incident began about dinner time Sept. 17, Lewis said, at the home she and Tichenor shared on Birch Drive in the Argentine neighborhood in Kansas City, Kan.

The children had been playing outside, and the couple started gathering them in. But their 10-year-old daughter was nowhere to be found.

Tichenor searched for her around the apartment complex and eventually came to the door of a neighbor. He knocked, but no one answered. He knocked again. Then, he pushed open the door and went inside. He found his daughter there. But as he left with her, Tichenor was confronted by two men at the home.

One of them bit Tichenor on the back as he left, according to Lewis.

Tichenor returned home, but both he and Lewis were upset. “Who bites in a fight?” Lewis asked.

Tichenor went back to the apartment where the altercation happened, according to Lewis. He argued with the men there about having bitten him. He asked them if they had diseases.

From there, the situation grew worse. Tichenor found himself confronting a larger group as more people joined the argument, some of them armed. Lewis stepped in to defend Tichenor, and someone pushed her. That made Tichenor angrier.

But the couple extricated themselves and went home. Lewis hoped that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t. As Tichenor sat on the couch in their living room, he remained angry. He did not heed Lewis’ advice to let it go. He said he would go back to the neighbor’s apartment and settle the score.

This time Lewis stayed inside, so she didn’t see what happened. She just heard the wailing of bystanders calling for an ambulance.

Lewis and Tichenor had been together since they were teenagers. Lewis had befriended Tichenor’s sister while Tichenor was living in Indiana. After going along with the sister to visit him, Lewis brought Tichenor back to the Kansas City area with her.

Robert D. Tichenor, his father, said his family had been trying to get Tichenor and Lewis and their children to move to Indiana. He hoped they could get a new start there with the help of a couple of job opportunities ready for his son. The younger Tichenor had been out of work about six months, he said.

“Bubby” loved his children, and all children, the father said. He loved to gather with kids and lead them in games of football and basketball. He also loved fishing.

Now, Lewis can’t seem to stop reliving that evening that had been so calm but ended so badly.

“I wish it was not real,” Lewis said. She never worried about her neighbors before.

“We were a community,” she said.

Tichenor’s death was under investigation by the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department’s Major Case Unit.

Police asked anyone with information to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.

This story was originally published September 23, 2018 at 5:40 PM.