‘My heart breaks again,’ Kansas City mayor says as another child dies by gunfire
City leaders decried a shooting Monday afternoon that left two people injured and a young boy dead.
The child’s death is the 148th homicide this year in Kansas City. At this time last year, 114 homicides had been recorded.
“My heart breaks again,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said at the scene.
The shooting was reported just before 3 p.m.
A vehicle stopped near a residence in the 2900 block of East 33rd Street and at least one person fired into the vehicle at what appeared to be close range, said Sgt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department.
The driver drove to the fire station at Linwood and Indiana and asked firefighters for help.
“What they found inside the vehicle was really unfortunate,” Becchina said.
A man and a woman in the front seats and a boy in the back seat had been struck by the gunfire.
The boy, who was under the age of five, was the most seriously injured.
“They (the child) were transported by EMS to the hospital where they unfortunately died,” Becchina said.
A fourth person in the vehicle was not injured. The car, parked near the fire station, was riddled with bullet holes.
Becchina said the two adults were in stable condition.
Lucas and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker arrived at the scene Monday afternoon.
“We hate to see another funeral of the type of which we’ve already seen this summer,” Lucas said, referring to the June 29 death of LeGend Taliferro. The four-year-old was sleeping when he was fatally shot.
The homicide sparked a federal effort in Kansas City aimed at quelling violent crime named Operation LeGend.
Lucas urged anyone with information about Monday’s shooting to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.
“We need your leads, we need to make sure this stops,” he said. “One way we make sure it stops is that those who do these sorts of things are held accountable. Because when you look at the shot up vehicle, you recognize that these are people that had no regard for the life of anybody.”
In addition to enforcement, Lucas said prevention and intervention are key in addressing violent crime.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said she hopes some measure of justice will be brought.
“I pray that someday I can look at a family that’s grieving and a community that’s grieving and tell them that there’s some justice that’s going to come their way,” she said.
Rosilyn Temple, founder of KC Mothers in Charge, noted that the shooting took place in broad daylight.
“We’re in a bad place,” she said. “We as a community — we’re going to have to take our streets back ... If we don’t address it as a community, we’re going to keep losing our babies, our family members every day.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2020 at 4:31 PM.
