KC suffers its deadliest summer in at least 10 years as feds shine national spotlight
Kansas City suffered its deadliest summer in at least a decade this year, with detectives investigating 69 homicides from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
While the May holiday fell earlier and the September one later, summer 2020 was still an outlier: 52 people were slain during those months in 2019 and 45 in 2018, according to data kept by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings.
Other years have seen even lower numbers: In 2014, which ended with the fewest killings in decades, 20 were slain over the summer.
When asked by The Star about the difficulty in reaching his goal to reduce homicides in Kansas City, Mayor Quinton Lucas pointed to several factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic limiting violence prevention services that were in place before the virus outbreak.
“There are a lot of challenges, but you know, frankly, I don’t give a damn, right?” Lucas said. “That’s not good enough, because there are too many people dying.”
Despite being in the middle of the pandemic, a silent killer, as Rosilyn Temple called it, people are still going into homes and crowds and committing murder.
“We can’t even see this COVID-19, but we can see each other,” said Temple, executive director of KC Mothers in Charge. “We have to learn how to deal with conflict.”
This year began with grim statistics: 17 people were killed in the city in January, marking the most slayings in that month in at least the last decade. This summer, federal officials launched an operation in Kansas City and other metropolitan areas to reduce violent crime and homicides.
Kansas City remains on pace to suffer its deadliest year ever. As of Saturday, 143 people have been killed in homicides this year in the city, compared to 110 by this time in 2019, according to data maintained by The Star. Most were victims of shootings.
By comparison, there had been 110 homicides by this time in 2017, which ended with 155 killings — the most in the city’s history when counting four fatal police shootings.
Violence amid a pandemic
Those who work in local violence prevention have said this summer was particularly devastating as people simultaneously waded through a pandemic.
Temple is a familiar face at many crime scenes. The violence and anger on display this summer is the worst she’s seen.
When officers were called to a shooting in the early hours of Aug. 31 in the 5400 block of Swope Parkway, Temple was close behind them. At the scene, she found relatives of the victim, 32-year-old Tara D. Price, living through shock and grief.
“It just took me back to my trauma,” said Temple, who lost her son Antonio to gun violence in 2011.
She stood with Price’s sister, who told Temple she had lost her own son about a year prior.
“I’ve been through this before,” Temple recalled the sister saying. “Now I don’t have anyone else left.”
In one particularly deadly stretch of summer, six people were fatally shot in 26 hours.
Following that period — the deadliest weekend of the year — Damon Daniel, president of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, guessed the pandemic was linked in ways to the increase in crime.
More people are likely suffering from depression and substance abuse, he said. Others may be confined to homes that are toxic environments.
To solve more killings this summer, federal officials launched Operation LeGend, an initiative named after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot in June while sleeping in a Kansas City apartment.
It has led to the arrest of at least 33 homicide suspects in the region, though it’s unclear how many have been charged.
Though community members have questioned their intentions, federal officials have insisted the operation is working.
Earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said overall violent crime has fallen about 30% in Kansas City since Operation LeGend began. He cited a police statistic: Violent crime, which includes robberies and rapes, among other things, decreased from 1,171 to 813 instances in the six weeks before the operation to the six weeks after.
Additionally, homicides decreased from 33 to 28 in that time, according to police. Also during that time, aggravated assaults, include non-fatal shootings, dropped from 636 to 327, which Barr called “a remarkable” percentage.
However, some local leaders, including Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, have said the operation is “not a long-term solution.”
“There are a lot of guns,” Lucas said. “There are a lot of people out there that are inclined to use guns in negative ways.
“I grew up here; I grew up near murders. I’ve had family that’s been murdered. It needs to change. And I want 25 years from now for Kansas City to say, ‘Well, you know what, they turned the tide and look at our community and how safe it is.’”
The victims
As the sun was setting Aug. 25, police were called to a shooting in the East Bottoms, where they found Jahmiere Green, 18, and Brandon Rainey, 22, shot to death in a vehicle near Guinotte and North Montgall avenues.
The young men were victims of the second of three double homicides this summer.
Summers, when school is out and temperatures are hotter, are historically marked by an increase in shootings across the U.S. But this season has been particularly bloody, and Kansas City is no exception.
The victims this summer ranged in age from 4-year-old LeGend to 67-year-old Arlin Jones. The average age was 33.
While the vast majority of the victims were shot, five were stabbed and seven died of unknown injuries. Two were killed by police.
Ten of the victims were women. That includes 20-year-old Diamon Eichelburger, a pregnant woman who was fatally shot while pushing a baby in a stroller, police said.
In addition to LeGend, three other victims were children, ages 15, 16 and 17.
The violence plagued various parts of Kansas City. Some neighborhoods, however, suffered more than others.
In Northeast Kansas City, for example, a man was found fatally shot on a sidewalk June 2 in the 3400 block of Independence Avenue. Two weeks later, a man with a head injury was found dead in the street a few blocks northeast, a 1/3 of a mile walk away. The next month, a man was killed in a shooting down the street from the June 2 homicide, in the 3500 block of Independence Avenue.
But the lives devastated by violence extend beyond those killed.
As of Sept. 6, 452 people have survived shootings this year in Kansas City. By this time last year, the city tallied 359 non-fatal shooting victims, according to Kansas City Police Department data.
The wounded include a 4-year-old girl shot in the leg Sept. 2 while getting out of a car near East 43rd Street and South Benton Avenue. She was heading to the park when she was caught in the crossfire of a rolling gun battle, police said.
Days earlier, four people were hospitalized in a shooting outside 9ine Ultra Lounge, a nightclub in the 4800 block of Noland Road, police said. Over Labor Day weekend, a shooting at Swope Park injured six people.
The Star’s Humera Lodhi contributed to this report
Gun violence will be the subject of a new, statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.
To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.
