Second teenage victim found dead after Saturday shooting in Kansas City, police say
Update: Police have identified the victims as Dominique Nelson and Dominik Simmons, both of whom were 15.
A second homicide victim, a teenage boy, was found Sunday afternoon after a shooting late Saturday also took the life of a teenage girl in a south Kansas City neighborhood, according to police.
Officers were called to the shooting just after 10 p.m. Saturday at East 73rd Street and Norton Avenue, where they found the first gunshot victim, police said. She died at the scene.
The gunfire broke out during an argument outside that involved “two small groups of people,” Capt. David Jackson, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, said at the time.
Both groups dispersed as people ran in different directions after the gunshots, Jackson said. At the time, detectives believed the girl — who was initially described by police as a woman — was the only victim.
But family and friends worried there was possibly another victim in the area, Jackson said in an update Sunday. The department deployed drones while officers searched with flashlights, but a second victim was not found.
Relatives continued to search the neighborhood Sunday. They flagged down an officer who also helped them search. She found the teenage boy dead about 1 p.m. Sunday behind a vacant house roughly a block south of the shooting scene, according to police.
“This is an unfortunate situation and we appreciate the persistence of the family as they continued to look for their loved one,” Jackson wrote in an email to reporters.
The victims have not been publicly identified. No arrests have been announced.
The killings marked the 37th and 38th this year in Kansas City. There had also been 38 homicides by this time last year, which ended with 182 homicides, the most in the city’s history in a single year, according to data maintained by The Star.
Police asked anyone with information to call detectives at 816-234-5043 or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.
Gun violence is 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 21, 2021 at 4:46 PM.
