Disappearance of memorial to man killed by KCPD officer leaves family with questions
Just before Easter, Donnie Sanders picked out a bouquet of brightly colorful fabric flowers to display outside the Kansas City home he shared with his sister, Reshonda Sanders.
When the 47-year-old father was killed by a Kansas City police officer a few weeks later, his sister moved the flowers to the site where he was shot. Family members added a cross, stuffed animals and photos of Sanders.
Last week all of those items disappeared from the spot near E. 52nd Street and Wabash Avenue where they had sat for months, Reshonda Sanders said. The family doesn’t know who did it.
“Why would somebody take it? Why would somebody do that?” she asked Sunday.
Sanders was killed March 12 by an officer who believed he was armed. The day after his death, the Kansas City Police Department announced Sanders was not carrying a weapon.
Reshonda Sanders said her brother was already taken from his family without reason. Now their memories of him are gone without explanation.
The family never had a proper funeral or burial for Sanders, who was killed weeks into the coronavirus pandemic shutdown. His ashes still sit in his room.
In the meantime, the memorial became a stand-in for a grave site, Sanders’ sister said. One uncle came by often to cut the grass and fluff the fur on the stuffed animals.
Reshonda Sanders and her eldest sister, Youlanda Sanders, frequently walk to the site to sit with their brother’s memory. Sometimes they talk to him. Sometimes they sit in silence.
“We don’t understand. Why would you want to mess with the memorial?” Sanders asked. “He’s already gone. That’s all we have left of my brother.”
A family friend set up a GoFundMe in the hopes of raising $2,000 to buy a headstone engraved with Sanders’ name and face to put in place of the memorial as a permanent remembrance of him. The family said neighbors gave them permission to put the memorial in a grassy area beside the street.
“Donnie Sanders was taken from his family too soon and for that he is our George Floyd of Kansas City,” Anton Washington, Executive Director of Creative Innovative Entrepreneurs, wrote on the fundraiser page. “This racial injustice that has tainted our community for decades on end has to stop and we have to stand up and care about those in our community.”
In recent months, Sanders’ family joined protests against police brutality and racial injustice in the wake of the killing of Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer.
They continue to chant Sanders’ name alongside family of other Black men killed by police in Kansas City: Ryan Stokes, Cameron Lamb and Terrance Bridges.
Sanders’ family says he was driving from his girlfriend’s house near Linwood Boulevard and Chestnut Avenue to his sister’s house on 57th Street and Indiana Avenue when he encountered police.
According to the police department’s version of events, an officer attempted to pull Sanders over about 11:15 p.m. at 51st Street and Prospect Avenue.
The car came to a stop in an alley and Sanders got out of the vehicle and ran, police said.
He then turned toward an officer near 52nd Street and raised his arms “as though he had a weapon,” police said at the time. Sanders was told to drop the weapon.
An officer shot him when he didn’t comply, police said.
Sanders was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died. The officer was placed on administrative leave, but has since returned to work.
The investigation of the shooting is being conducted by the Kansas City Police Department.
Five months later, the family still doesn’t know what traffic violation Sanders was pulled over for in the first place. Police have declined to say what it may have been.
More2, a Kansas City interfaith social justice organization, circulated an online petition demanding more transparency and accountability from the police department. This included asking for the name of the officer who shot Sanders.
More than 17,600 people had signed the petition as of Sunday.
This story was originally published August 16, 2020 at 12:45 PM.
