Fundraiser set up for mother of 8 whose van was totaled in ‘barrage of gunfire’ in KC
A mother of eight children was sitting in her minivan on Thanksgiving outside a Kansas City market when she had to duck from a “barrage of gunfire,” Jackson County’s top prosecutor recalled.
The woman, who Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said was in the wrong place at the wrong time, was grateful two of her relatives were inside the store near Troost Avenue and East 80th Street. Otherwise, they may have been wounded — or worse.
While bullets missed the woman, others struck 33-year-old Paul Long, who died at a hospital, police said.
“Though the tragic part is that there is a homicide that occurred,” Baker said Wednesday, “perhaps the more miraculous part is that there wasn’t more than one.”
Now, Baker’s office is trying to raise $10,000 through GoFundMe to replace the woman’s minivan, which was totaled in the shooting. While her office’s Caring for Crime Survivors program can replace windows and tires that have been shot out, it does not have the money to buy a used minivan “without the generosity of average Kansas Citians.”
The woman, Danielle Benson, could not immediately be reached by The Star on Wednesday night. She told 41 Action News on Tuesday that during the gunfire, she was praying “that I don’t get shot.”
Detectives have identified a person of interest in the shooting, said Sgt. Jake Becchina, a police spokesman.
The shooting was one of hundreds this year in Kansas City, which surpassed its record number of killings in a calendar year in October.
As of Wednesday, the city had suffered 176 homicides this year, according to data maintained by The Star, which includes police shootings. The previous homicide record was set in 2017, when 155 people were killed.
Nonfatal shootings have also spiked this year.
As of Monday, 598 people had been shot and survived this year in Kansas City, compared to 464 by that time last year, according to police data. That’s compared to 491 living victims in all of 2019 and 450 in all of 2018.
“That’s an absolutely appalling number,” Baker said of the likelihood the year ends with 600 surviving gunshot victims. “It demonstrates that the city is in crisis.”
