Kansas City woman sentenced to three life sentences for 2019 triple shooting
A Kansas City woman accused of killing three people in 2019 was given three consecutive life sentences by a Jackson County judge on Tuesday.
A Jackson County jury found Lynnsey D. Jones, 37, guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of armed criminal action in November. The trial lasted four days. A judge sentenced Jones to three consecutive life sentences without parole and 30 years on the armed criminal action conviction to be served concurrently.
Jones was convicted in an Oct. 17, 2019, shooting that left three people dead. Police identified the victims as Larry Barnes, 40; Brandy Jones, 38; and Larona Jones, 42.
Officers were patrolling the 4500 block of South Benton Avenue when they heard gunfire on the night of the shooting, Officer Doaa El-Ashkar, a Kansas City police spokeswoman said at the time.
Two people were spotted in the middle of the street. One, later identified as Jones, was found holding a rifle and taken into police custody. The second, later identified as Victor Sykes, 46, was arrested by police a short distance away after he allegedly ran. He was wearing gloves and had blood and a cut on his left hand and wrist, according to court records.
Jones told police that she went to the home of Brandy and Larona Jones to buy drugs. While waiting for the drugs, she saw two men arguing on the front porch. One of the men shot the other and handed her the gun, according to court records.
Jones was accused of the killings alongside Sykes, her boyfriend. But she confessed to the crimes while in custody, alleging Sykes was not even there, according to court documents.
She told police she shot the victims “because I’m a bad person,” a detective wrote in charging documents.
When police asked her why Sykes and another man were fighting Jones said, “I don’t know why.”
Sykes was on parole for murder at the time of the shooting. He was convicted in Wyandotte County of second-degree murder in 1993 and sentenced to serve time in the Kansas Department of Corrections, according to prison records. He was granted out-of-state parole in Missouri in October 2018.
Sykes’ trial is scheduled for Aug. 1, 2022, according to court records.
