‘It’s crazy here’: Business owner not surprised by another shooting in northeast KC
Every morning before work, Noe Sanchez prays that he makes it through the day without being shot.
Sanchez, the owner of Estrella Tire Shop on Independence Avenue, has seen three homicides near his business this year alone.
That’s just how it is, the father of five said with a shrug.
When he arrived at work Sunday morning, Sanchez wasn’t surprised to see the area again filled with police officers and detectives working the latest shooting scene.
“This is a very very dangerous place,” he said as he stood outside his business Sunday morning. “It’s crazy here. This is crazy.”
He pointed to a boarded-up apartment across the street from him. A 29-year-old man was gunned down in front of the building one afternoon in July. Sanchez heard the gunshots, then he saw the body. He wasn’t surprised; the place often sounded like a “war zone” at night.
At dinner with his family Saturday evening before, Sanchez predicted there would be another homicide in the city soon. Until the shots fired call came in Sunday morning, Kansas City had gone more than a week without a killing.
Officers were called to the latest homicide just before 9 a.m. at the intersection of Independence and Monroe avenues, said Officer Donna Drake, a spokeswoman with the Kansas City Police Department.
There they found a man suffering from gunshot wounds near a sidewalk, Drake said. The victim, who has not yet been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sgt. Jake Becchina, a Kansas City police spokesman, recalled being able to see two other homicide scenes from where he stood Sunday. That many within eyesight of each other is “not common and is too much,” he said in an email.
While the cause of the killing Sunday remained under investigation, the two most common contributing factors across the city are arguments and drugs, Becchina said. With lots of vehicles and pedestrians at most times of the day along Independence Avenue, there are more opportunities for “interactions that potentially could turn violent,” he said.
Weekends tend to be the most violent, Sanchez said as police lights flashed a block east. He paused to speak with one of his co-workers in Spanish as another colleague rolled a tire across the parking lot.
“I don’t know what can I say. To me it’s normal,” Sanchez said. “Somebody got killed, you got to work. That’s normal. You’ve got to bring the money home. It’s sad, real sad, but that’s how it is.”
Including Sunday’s victim, six people have been killed within two blocks of Independence and Monroe avenues this year, according to homicide data kept by The Star.
One night in early June, a man was shot on the sidewalk in the 3400 block of Independence Avenue, about two blocks west of Sunday’s crime scene. The victim, Emmit Martin, 33, died at the hospital.
That same month, 51-year-old Hoang Dinh was declared a homicide victim after he was found dead from a head injury about two blocks northwest of where Sunday’s scene was taped off.
In May, Marvin A. Lorthridge, 38, was found fatally shot one block south of Sunday’s scene. In April, Anna Velazquez, 35, was believed to be fatally shot by her husband about two blocks south of where Sunday’s shooting happened.
Sanchez recalled a customer stopping in to get new tires in September of 2019. She told him she’d heard it wasn’t safe in the area at night. He countered that it wasn’t safe during the day either.
Then they heard two gunshots. Sanchez and his customer ran outside where they saw a man who had been shot in front of a nearby convenience store on Independence Avenue.
Sanchez doesn’t recall the area being as violent two decades ago when he started working at the business. He believes the number of guns on the street, coupled with gang conflicts and drugs, are at least partially to blame for the increase in shootings.
Unless something changes, Sanchez will keep starting each day with a prayer.
“God, take me back home,” he says.
Anyone with information about Sunday’s killing is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).
The killing is Kansas City’s 161st homicide of the year, according to data kept by The Star, which includes police shootings. That compares to 125 homicides reported by this time in 2019.
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.
This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 2:40 PM.
