Man guilty of gun crime in accidental shooting death at Kansas City Zoo parking lot
A 28-year-old man has pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm he accidentally discharged last year, killing another man, in a parking lot of the Kansas City Zoo.
Anthony Meneses was sitting behind the driver’s seat of a car Aug. 9, 2020, in the 6800 block of Zoo Drive when he grabbed a pistol that accidentally fired, fatally striking 19-year-old Jason Smith, according to federal prosecutors in western Missouri.
Smith was sitting in the front driver’s seat about 5 p.m. that day when he was struck by the bullet, prosecutors said. Two other people were in the 2005 Toyota Camry at the time, including Smith’s girlfriend, court records show.
Off-duty officers working at the zoo were alerted to the shooting when they were told a man had collapsed in the parking lot. They quickly realized Smith had been shot and began rendering aid.
Smith was taken to Research Medical Center, where he died.
Federal agents in Kansas City as part of Operation LeGend — a crime-fighting initiative named after a 4-year-old boy whose shooting death outraged the city — assisted officers at the scene, police said at the time.
Meneses had a 2015 felony conviction of tampering with a motor vehicle. He pleaded guilty Monday to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
“This shooting turned an otherwise uneventful Sunday afternoon at the zoo into a couple hours of chaos for visitors to the park,” the Kansas City Police Department said Tuesday on Twitter.
