‘Just getting started out on life’: Mother pleads for help finding daughter’s killer
The family of a 24-year-old mother who had been fatally shot outside a Family Dollar store nearly a year ago requested the public’s help Wednesday in finding her killer.
“We miss her. We love her. We just want anybody that has any information to come forward and let us know anything that you know,” said Kristina Colum, the mother of KaShawn Haskell.
“We need closure,” Colum said during a news conference Wednesday morning at police headquarters in downtown Kansas City .
Haskell was shot to death in the parking lot outside the store in the 8200 block of Troost Avenue in late April 2020.
At the news conference, police asked for help in finding Breanna Burton, who is believed to be in her 20s and from Kansas City, to question her about the killing.
“She’s a person of interest in this case and we believe that if we are able to talk to her that we can maybe get this case across the street to the prosecutor’s office and get the family some sort of closure and justice,” said Detective Scott Emery, with the Kansas City Police Department’s Homicide Unit.
Recently, police learned that Haskell probably knew Burton.
“There was a phone conversation and they agreed to meet at the location,” Emery said. There was some argument that happened, but police aren’t sure what was behind it.
He asks anyone with information regarding her whereabouts or any other information about the case to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).
‘Just so unbelievable.’
The day of the death, there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, Colum said.
“The not normal thing was that somebody took her life over an argument,” Colum said. “They just took her away from us. We miss her dearly.”
Colum was in a grocery store buying steaks for a cookout when she received the phone call that her daughter had been shot.
“It was just so unbelievable,” she said. “So I was like it just couldn’t be me. This ain’t happening to me. You know, not my daughter.”
Haskell was a “little bitty person” who easily could have been pushed down. She didn’t need to be killed, Colum said.
“It just broke my heart and my life has been changed since then,” she said.
Her soon-to-be 3-year-old daughter Kayana Haskell will now grow up without her mom. Being so young, she doesn’t understand that her mother has been killed, her family said.
“That’s a hard thing to try to explain to her daughter that she cant’ see her mama no more,” Colum said. “It’s been a year and she’s still asks for her.”
Kayana was at the press conference too, along with KaShawn’s 12-year-old sister Desarae James and an aunt, Brandi Casey. All family members wore T-shirts with photos of KaShawn Haskell that were made as a memorial for her funeral.
KaShawn Haskell, who graduated from Washington High School in Kansas City, Kansas, was studying to be a nurse and wanted to have another baby in a couple years. She had a new car and a new place to live.
“She was like on a good track,” Colum said. “She was just getting started out on life.”
Gun violence is the subject of a 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 February 17, 2021 at 1:11 PM.
