What if they had lived? Mother of 5 and teen son killed in Kansas City radiated joy
Khasheme Strother was 16 and radiant. It was October 2001, and she held her first born son, Raymon Hill, in her arms as her older brother, Kwazi Tanner, drove across Kansas City to meet his nephew.
Hill was adorable, with “big ole eyes and little cheeks” and Strother couldn’t stop smiling, Tanner recalled.
The mother and son were immediately inseparable and family spent the next 19 years admiring Strother’s strength as a single mother and watching Hill strive to be like her: hard-working, independent and funny.
“She glowed like a woman on her wedding day when she first had him, and she never let that light fade,” Tanner’s wife, Sonja Tanner, said. “It’s like it just got brighter with every year he got older and with every accomplishment he made and every stride he pushed for.”
Last Wednesday afternoon, as flurries piled on top a thick blanket of snow, half a dozen police cars sped through Kansas City’s west side neighborhood, stopping in front of the townhouse Strother, 35, and Hill, 19, had called their home for the past decade.
Inside the home in the 1900 block of West Pennway Terrace, police found the mother and son fatally shot. Strother’s boyfriend, Dmarius Bozeman, was later arrested and charged.
Had he lived, Hill would have started a barbering apprenticeship just days later in Kansas City. His goal was to open his own barbershop.
And had she lived, Strother would still be loving on her five pre-teen and teenage sons — three of whom she adopted. The most recent joined her home in August.
But because they died, their extended family who usually gathered to dance, sing and laugh instead came from all corners of the city and surrounding states to wrap their arms around the surviving boys.
They gathered Monday evening outside the home Strother and Hill made a sanctuary for others, family said.
“They always had joy. They always smiled.” Kwazi Tanner said.
“And if you didn’t see them, you heard them,” his wife added. “They made sure their presence was known so that everyone could come get their love.”
As the oldest son, Hill was a role model. He was also very clean-cut, family said, a trait that drew him to the barber business.
“I feel he wanted to do it just because he knew he could make people feel beautiful outside as well as inside,” Sonja Tanner said. “It was just his way of giving back to the community.”
Before he received his certificate from Transformed Barber & Cosmetology Academy on Prospect Avenue, he took up jobs at Sonic, then Walmart, to lighten his mother’s financial burden and care for his family.
Strother was a boy mom.
She played Nintendo Switch with her sons, joined them at the basketball court and could throw a football spiral that would rival Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes, family joked.
“She didn’t have no problem showing them boys no matter how big you are, I’m still your mama and I will still handle what needs to be handled,” Sonja Tanner said. “She always resorted to ‘we’re going to talk it out, or we’re going to wrestle it out, and it’s all going to be done.’”
To everyone else, Strother was like the family doctor, helping care for sick relatives and always reminding them to drink orange juice and room temperature purified water.
Strother finished high school while caring for her newborn son, then became a certified nursing assistant. She also became a certified foster parent and spent some time working with school-age children with disabilities.
“One thing that hurts really bad, that she never received her ‘pay it forward,’” Kwazi Tanner said. “She gave so much, but never got anything back. She missed her moment.”
Twenty years ago, the Tanners and Strother made a pact to raise one another’s children if anything ever happened to them.
Now they’re honoring that. The Tanners, who already have four children of their own, are bringing Strother’s four surviving sons, ages 12, 15, 16 and 19, into their home in DeWitt, a town of about 5,000 people in eastern Iowa.
They’ll push the younger ones to graduate with honors like Hill did. They’ll keep them active in sports and encourage them to follow their dreams.
“The young men that we are getting are wonderful and amazing and you just couldn’t ask for more respectable young men,” Sonja Tanner said.
Family said they don’t want to talk about details of their deaths, since police are still investigating and they’re still waiting on more information themselves.
But Sonja Tanner did confirm that Strother was a victim of domestic violence, and family believes the last thing Hill did was “honor his mother and protect his brothers.”
Court records allege Strother was shot five times by her boyfriend, Bozeman, who has been charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action.
Three juveniles were inside the home at the time of the killings, according to charging documents. The juveniles, who aren’t identified by name in records, told police they went downstairs to check on Strother and found Bozeman on top of her. They told him to get off of her. When he didn’t, they got into a physical altercation.
The children also told detectives that police had been to the home before when Bozeman became violent with Strother, court records show.
After this fight, Strother and Bozeman went into the master bedroom, at which point the children heard gunshots, according to court records. Some of the children ran outside as Hill and another juvenile found Strother on the floor and Bozeman holding a gun.
One of the children said they heard another volley of gunshots soon after. Police later found Hill’s body lying near his mother’s with a gun next to him.
Bozeman, who sustained a gunshot wound to the leg, told police he shot Hill in self-defense and accidentally shot Strother.
“When people are in an abusive relationship, it’s just hard for some people to reach out,” said Strother’s aunt, Yvonne Strother, who used to work with civic leader Alvin Brooks to combat domestic violence in the metro area.
“If you feel unsafe, ask for help and get out,” Sonja Tanner added.
A GoFundMe has been set up by family to help cover funeral expenses.
They also hope to put a memorial bench up across the street from the home on West Pennway Terrace, along a wide green space and down the hill from Observation Park.
“This is where Raymon and Khasheme loved to be. Raymon probably knows this block better than he knows any other street in the city,” Sonja Tanner said. “This is where they loved and this is where we want everybody to be able to come and honor them.”
They’re left with a legacy wrapped up in a phrase Strother used to say to her loved ones:
“One thing for sure and two things for certain: I love you.”
Resources
An estimated one in every four women and one in every 10 men experience domestic violence each year in the United States, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
If you or a loved one are in need of help these resources are available. You do not need to have an emergency to call the crisis hotlines.
Kansas’s crisis hotline: 888-363-2287
Friends of Yates: Crisis hotline: 913-321-0951; toll-free crisis hotline: 855-232-0252
Safehome: 24 hour hotline, 913-262-2868
Kansas City Anti Violence Project: Crisis hotline, available by text, call or email, 816-348-3665 or 913-802-4014 or info@kcavp.org
Rose Brooks Center: Crisis hotline, 816-861-6100
Hope House: Crisis hotline, 816-461-4673
Newhouse: Crisis hotline, 816-471-5800
Any of the six Kansas City area metro domestic violence shelters can be reached at 816-468-5463.
If you are outside the Kansas City area the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233.
This story was originally published February 24, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the day of the homicides, which occurred Wednesday afternoon.
