‘Momma, God gonna make me OK’: Family mourns father killed Thanksgiving weekend in KC

Update: Kansas City police on Wednesday confirmed Martez Brock was killed in a shooting.

Alma Brown spent Thanksgiving apart from her son.

Brown, who lost her husband in October to a heart attack, had dinner with her daughters who cooked for her. Her son Martez Brock spent the holiday at a cousin’s house. His sisters made sure to drop off a plate of food for him. They were being responsible, heeding advice from health officials to keep gatherings small in order to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The mother and son talked on the phone Thursday afternoon, laughing and joking as usual.

“I just was calling to make sure you’re OK,” Brock, 34, told her before they hung up.

Brown asked him the same question in return.

“Momma, God gonna make me OK,” Brock, a father to three, reassured her.

That was the last conversation they would have.

Brock’s body was found the following evening outside in a residential area of East 37th Street and Agnes Avenue.

His death is now being investigated as a homicide.

A man of faith

Brock was a jokester at heart, family said, a trait he passed down to his teenage son. The man could do nearly perfect impressions of stand-up comedian Richard Pryor and Jerome, a character played by comedian Martin Lawrence on the hit ‘90s sitcom “Martin.” The memory still sends his family members into suppressed fits of laughter.

“He thought he was a rapper too,” his younger sister Karell Brock said, smiling. “He had a couple bars.”

But when it was time to get serious, her brother was ready with a Bible verse to back him up.

When Karell Brock was having a bad day, Martez Brock liked to quote John 3:16 to her.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

As family gathered Sunday afternoon to remember Brock, they said they took comfort in knowing their dearly departed, who was a member of Spruce St. Mathew Baptist Church and often carried his Bible to the grocery store, was “really resting in peace.”

“Whatever was going on in his personal world, he still seeked God,” his aunt Patricia Brock said. “I wish more people were like that.”

‘They will be judged’

Patricia Brock remembers her competitive nephew playing kickball at big family gatherings. The men took weeks to admit defeat to the women. She remembers his wide smile. And the tall frame of her “gentle giant” nephew saying he loved her, even when she was “fussin’” about something.

But now she shoulders the weight of new realities and of the memories she’ll never make.

“I never had a memory of him being dead in the streets,” Patricia Brock said. “I never had a thought that when he was a child that he would grow up and not see his children have children or be married.”

Police have not yet released Brock’s cause of death, and no suspect information was available as of Sunday evening, said Capt. David Jackson, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department.

His family said they don’t know who killed him either, or why.

Officers had responded about 6 p.m. Friday to a call about a “suspicious party” in the area of East 37th Street and Agnes Avenue where they found Brock’s body. His injuries, they said, made them suspect foul play.

“These cowards, they have no idea the level of the depth of pain that they caused,” Patricia Brock said of whomever caused her nephew’s death. “I would like them to know they may never stand before a judge in a black robe, but they will be judged.”

While they may be the most recent family to be buried under the grief of a “senseless killing,” Brock’s family members are far from the only ones.

Brock is Kansas City’s 174th homicide victim of 2020, according to data maintained by The Star, which includes police killings. This year has been the most deadly in the city’s history.

“My heart aches for my sister because I know she physically hurts, and the sad part is I know she’s not by herself,” Patricia Brock said. “There are so many mothers and sister and brothers who ache in their bodies because of some coward.”

Brown said her son, who most recently had been working for FedEx, had dreams of designing and building his own home.

“He was a good person. He was a loving person. He just kind of got caught up in the wrong crowd, and he was trying to find his way back,” she said. “But he was loved by me and a whole lot of people.”

Father of three

Wind chimes greeted a regular stream of masked family members and friends coming in and out of Brown’s home Sunday afternoon. Chatter swelled and subsided in the back room as football players ran across a muted TV screen. A large image of Brown’s recently-deceased husband hung on a wall.

Brock, the eldest of Brown’s eight kids, often visited the grave of his father, who died when he was in middle school.

When he began raising children of his own, he taught them from an early age to respect their mother and grandmother, Brown said.

And he led by example, greeting women with a polite “yes ma’am” or “no ma’am.”

Brown said it will be difficult for her grandsons, 14 and 16, and granddaughter, 10, to forget a man like their father.

In front of Brown sat a framed photo of her granddaughter with her arms wrapped around Brock’s shoulders. The words “I love you Momma” were overlaid across the photo in big blue letters.

Much like Brown isn’t the first mother to lose a son to violence, Brock’s children aren’t the first to lose a father.

Brock’s children are intelligent, she said. They know many realities of the world, and their family tries to protect them from becoming a part of those tribulations. They aren’t allowed to stay out at the mall late. They don’t go to parties like some of their classmates.

“They know the dangers of the street,” said Brown, who had two cousins killed more than 20 years ago. “So I think that helps with understanding what actually happened to their father. It’s sad, but I think it’s more common than uncommon.”

The family plans to return to the street that took their loved one. They will release balloons and honor the soul they believe is now wrapped in heaven’s arms.

“So many people have lost their lives for a little bit of nothing,” Brown said. “We have got to get back to not doing wrong to people and feeling like life has no value.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 12:10 PM.