‘I’ve been shot. Can you help me?’: KC woman assists man injured in triple shooting
Kennia Barnes was watching a movie with her three young children Saturday evening at their home on Agnes Avenue when they heard a noise down the street.
It was a loud rattling, like a busted tire, accompanied by a volley of gunshots.
“It started getting closer so we just hit the ground,” Barnes, 38, said. “I told them to get down. Stay down for awhile.”
About three minutes later she heard someone coughing outside her open window. Barnes watched as a man walked up her front porch stairs.
“I’ve been shot,” he said. “Can you help me?”
He laid down on the porch and she got a towel to press against the gunshot wound on his side. He didn’t say much in the couple minutes that lapsed before an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital.
At the same time, police were just down the block responding to a triple shooting. The gunfire Barnes heard had left two people dead. The third, she said, was the man who came to her doorstep and ended up in the hospital in critical condition. Police later identified the fatal shooting victims as Joseph Smith, 64, and Curtis Thompkins, 33.
Officers were called at 8:40 p.m. to an outdoor disturbance in the 5000 block of Agnes Avenue, Sgt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman with the Kansas City Police Department, said in Saturday night. The call was later upgraded to a shooting.
Police at the scene found two men who were unresponsive with apparent gunshot wounds in front of a home just north of East 51st Street and Agnes Avenue, Becchina said.
A third man, who had also been shot, was found just north of the homicide victims, Becchina said. The man was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
A bloody towel Barnes used to help aid the surviving shooting victim still sat in a heap on her front porch mid-day Sunday. Two of her young children played nearby in the yard, soaking up the unseasonably warm March weather. Church-goers shuffled out of Mt. Horeb Baptist Ministries just up the street.
Barnes said it was quieter on her block than usual in the hours before the the shooting, especially with the weather as nice as it was.
She’s lived in the neighborhood — just south of Brush Creek and east of U.S. Route 71 — most of her life, and her grandmother owns a house nearby.
“Eh, we’re fine,” she said Sunday afternoon. “I don’t know, I’m probably a little desensitized by now. I’ve seen this happen too often.”
Barnes said she realizes a lot of people are hurting, and many people are dealing with mental issues or trauma, which she believes contributes to Kansas City’s gun violence.
“Nobody really gets help in these kind of communities,” she said. “Mental health is not really spoke on, and that’s a lot of what’s going on.”
Police said the shooting seemed to stem from a fender bender crash, which caused a “large disturbance” that led to gunfire, Becchina said.
“Detectives and crime scene investigators are canvassing for witnesses and processing the scene for evidence at this time,” he said late Saturday. “They will be working to identify the victims and determine what the sequence of events was that led to them being shot.”
Saturday’s killings mark the 27th and 28th homicides in Kansas City this year. 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.
Police are asking anyone with information on the shooting to contact homicide detectives at 816-234-5043 or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477). There is a reward of up to $25,000 for information in the killing.
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 March 7, 2021 at 3:02 PM.
