Woman charged in Wednesday homicide said shooting linked to death of boy days earlier
The fatal shooting of a man Wednesday in Kansas City may have been connected to the homicide of a 16-year-old boy three days earlier, court records show.
Tityana Coppage, 21, has been charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the fatal shooting of Keith Lars, 36, on Wednesday near Admiral Boulevard and Virginia Avenue, according to a Sunday news release from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office.
Following her arrest, Coppage told detectives her family believes Lars may have been involved in the fatal shooting of her 16-year-old brother three days earlier, according to charging documents.
Officers were initially called just after 12:30 pm Wednesday to the 3100 block of Thompson Avenue on a disturbance that was later upgraded to a shooting call, Sgt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman with the Kansas City Police Department, said at the time. There, police found evidence of a crime scene, but didn’t find any victims.
While officers were investigating the initial crime scene, someone in a Toyota flagged down members of the fire department at Admiral Boulevard and Virginia Avenue, saying someone in their car had been shot.
First responders began rendering aid to Lars, who had been shot in the chest and the leg, according to charging documents. He was declared dead at the scene a short time later.
A witness told detectives she had been in a parking lot off Thompson Avenue with her young son when she noticed a black SUV blocking her vehicle’s path, court records show. Two men, including Lars, were walking away from the SUV when someone inside the SUV started shooting at them, she told police. One of the men began shooting back.
Then the witness noticed Lars, “lifeless” on the ground.
After her arrest, Coppage told police she knew Lars would be in the area of Independence and Benton on Wednesday. She found him and told him to follow her SUV in his vehicle, according to charging documents. They both parked in a parking lot when a second black SUV pulled up, but no one got out of the vehicle.
Coppage said she told Lars she didn’t know who was in the third vehicle, at which point he started shooting at it. She told police she also went to shoot at the third vehicle, but said “at some point (Lars) got in the way during the exchange of gunfire,” court records show.
Officers who responded to the scene at Thompson Avenue found 23 shell casings from two guns.
Police later found two guns in the glove compartment of the Toyota; one matched some of the casings found at the initial scene. When executing a search warrant at Coppage’s apartment, police found a shotgun that matched the second type of shell casings found at the scene.
Coppage told police she had called Lars and asked him to meet in the hopes that Lars and one of her family members “would settle their differences before they killed each other,” according to charging documents.
Lars’ family members told police that Lars was driving in the 2500 block of Kensington Avenue on Monday when he was shot at, according to court records. Coppage denied witnessing the shooting, instead telling police that her family member said Lars shot at them instead.
Coppage told police some of her family believes Lars was involved in the fatal shooting of her brother, which took place on Jan. 10.
Kansas City police, on Jan. 10, responded to to a shooting just after 7:15 p.m. in the 5600 block of Paloma Avenue where they found 16-year-old Jayson Ugwuh Jr. Police found him inside a house suffering from gunshot wounds. He was taken to the hospital where he later died of his injuries, police said at the time.
Police earlier in the week confirmed Jayson was the older brother of Jayden Ugwuh who was shot and killed in Kansas City just over four years ago.
In 2016 FOX4 reported that Jayson held his dying brother in his arms after bullets struck the 9-year-old’s body, killing him.
Jayden, and his cousin Montell Ross, 8, were fatally shot early one August morning in 2016 in the 5700 block of College Avenue as someone fired at least 20 gunshots inside their home.
Ugwuh was the fifth homicide victim in Kansas City this year. Lars was the seventh. Kansas City ended last year with 182 homicides, the most in the city’s history in a single year, according to data maintained by The Star.
Prosecutor’s are asking that Coppage’s bond be set at $200,000 cash.
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 January 17, 2021 at 12:05 PM.
