‘A hero’: Before fatal shootout, Overland Park officer was honored in 2018 ‘ambush’
Overland Park police Officer Mike Mosher was on his way to work Sunday afternoon when he came across a possible hit-and-run crash.
Mosher, a decorated, 14½-year veteran of the force, radioed for assistance. It was shortly before Mosher’s shift was set to begin at 6 p.m., so he was driving in his personal car. He donned his uniform, which displayed a badge on his left arm to indicate he was a field training officer. It wasn’t yet a call for service, but Mosher, like his colleagues, was never off duty.
“That was Mike,” Police Chief Frank Donchez later recalled. “He wasn’t going to go around and call it in. He was going to get involved, and that’s what he did.”
Mosher’s voice crackled through police radios about 5:51 p.m.
“Badge 917. Involved in some kind of hit-and-run accident 1-2-3 and Antioch,” Mosher said, indicating he was at West 123rd Street and Antioch Road. “Can you start me a unit please?”
Moments later, Mosher could be heard again: “Can you upgrade that unit? He’s intoxicated.”
Dispatchers sent two officers his way. Another officer asked Mosher if the vehicle was stopped. Mosher replied it was — just east of the intersection, near pond fountains and an apartment building.
“He’s got out of his car and confronted me,” Mosher told dispatch, according to a recording of the audio traffic obtained through Broadcastify.com. “Refuses to get back into car.”
Mosher said he needed additional units.
Shortly after, gunshots were reportedly fired in the area. Multiple people called 911, one of whom heard five shots. Emergency tones went out across police radios.
One officer responded he was OK, but was checking on other injuries. Someone asked: “We’re getting information that there’s an officer on the ground, is that you?” It was not.
Police soon learned the officer was Mosher, who, during an altercation, exchanged gunfire with the suspect. He was identified Monday as Phillip Michael Carney. Both were wounded during the shootout.
Carney, 38, of Overland Park, died at the scene. Dozens of officers and emergency vehicles converged on the area.
Mosher, 37, was rushed to Overland Park Regional Medical Center, where he died about 45 minutes later — marking the second time an officer has been killed in the line of duty in the Overland Park Police Department’s history. A school resource officer who also served as president of the force’s Fraternal Order of Police, Mosher left behind a wife and young daughter.
“He loved what he did and he was damn good at it,” Donchez said Sunday night outside the department, standing near a three-candle memorial in front of a sign that displayed a heart with a blue line running through the middle. “He died doing what he loved.”
As of Monday morning, it remained unclear what exactly led up to the shooting, which unfolded just more than a mile west of police headquarters.
While the gunman was initially described as a hit-and-run suspect, Donchez told The Star he was not sure if Carney hit another vehicle or a tree before the altercation. A Johnson County team that probes officer-involved shootings was investigating.
John Lacy, a department spokesman, said Mosher and Carney were both outside of their vehicles when the shooting unfolded.
“He did his job all the way to the end,” Lacy told reporters, saying he was “choked up inside” and taking the loss hard.
Lacy said Sunday it was too early to know if Carney was intoxicated.
Carney was known to police prior to the shootout, but Lacy declined to elaborate Monday.
As many as 75 officers, police leadership, and Mosher’s parents, wife and daughter gathered at the hospital Sunday night. Donchez was there when Mosher was pronounced dead. He described it as heartbreaking.
“It’s horrific,” he said Monday, “but what strengthens you is when you see the strength of those around you.”
‘A hero until the end’
All Mosher ever wanted to do was work as a police officer, his parents told Donchez at the hospital.
He joined the Overland Park force Sept. 26, 2005. He worked as a school resource officer assigned to the Blue Valley School District and was a member of the crisis negotiation team.
Mosher, who stood to be promoted to sergeant in the next several months, passed his knowledge on to young officers, helping mold their careers, Donchez said. He also made sure other officers were safe.
That’s what Mosher did July 6, 2018, when he and his partner fatally shot 43-year-old Charles Webb, who fired shots at the officers with a long gun about 1 a.m. near West 79th and Grant streets, according to police.
Mosher and this partner responded to the area to investigate multiple reports of shots fired in a parking lot and courtyard of an apartment complex. When they found Webb, they gave verbal commands, but he turned around and fired at the officers, police said.
Before the shootout, Webb had been wanted on charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the shooting death of a man from Columbia, Missouri.
Recalling the shooting, Donchez said Mosher and his partner were “ambushed” by the gunman.
“That night two years ago, but for the grace of God, I could’ve been standing here that night,” Donchez told reporters and camera crews Sunday, saying bullets “whizzed” by both of the officers. “It didn’t phase him. He kept on doing his job.”
Mosher was given the Metropolitan Chiefs and Sheriffs Association’s Officer of the Year Award for the shooting. In a Twitter post Monday, the Kansas City Police Department said Mosher stopped the active shooter near a neighborhood.
“Neither the officers nor neighbors were hurt,” the department wrote. “He was a hero until the end.”
But for Mosher, the accolades — no matter how heroic the deeds — were not as important, Donchez said.
“He saw it as, ‘I’m getting paid to do a job and I’m going to do it as best as I can do,’” the chief said. “That commitment to service and that humility. … What else can I say about the guy? It’s awesome.”
Mosher was the first officer killed in Overland Park since Officer Deanna Rose was slain in January 1985.
Rose died two days after the driver of a vehicle she pulled over on suspicion of intoxication ran her over. Mosher was shot Sunday about three miles northeast from Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead, which was named after Rose.
Mosher’s funeral arrangements are pending.
Since the shooting, Donchez has heard from a number of law enforcement officials offering their condolences. That included Wyandotte County Sheriff Donald Ash, who in 2018 grieved the loss of two deputies who were fatally shot on the job.
In the wake Mosher’s death, Donchez has felt the profound sense of comradery among police.
“It runs deep,” he said. “It’s in your blood. And I know it was in Mike’s blood, for sure.”
This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 4:54 PM.
