Man sentenced to 25 years in fatal shooting of teenager in Kansas City
A 28-year-old man has been sentenced to 25 years in Missouri prison in the killing of a Kansas City teenager who was fatally shot while driving through the city’s Eastern 49-63 neighborhood in April 2019.
Tracy French, of Kansas City, was handed the sentence following a hearing Thursday in Jackson County Circuit Court, prosecutors announced Thursday. He was found guilty in February of involuntary manslaughter, armed criminal action and unlawful firearm possession after a jury trial.
According to court records, Kansas City police were dispatched on April 5, 2019 to the 1300 block of E. 63rd Street after a vehicle had struck a storefront there. In the wreckage they found 17-year-old Deontae Campbell, who was behind the wheel with a gunshot wound to the head. Another teen, who was injured in the crash but unscathed by the gunfire, was hospitalized with injuries from the crash.
The surviving passenger told police at the time that he and Campbell had just left the nearby Landing Mall when French, who was standing in the street, shot them. Campbell lost control of the vehicle after he was struck by gunfire.
Campbell was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead there.
Surveillance footage from a nearby business allegedly showed a man identified by police as French exit a red sedan that had just left the Landing Mall parking lot and stopped at a nearby intersection. French was allegedly then seen getting out of the driver’s side and raising his hand as if he was pointing a gun toward someone.
Crime scene investigators found several spent shell casings and a cellular telephone near the shooting area. A laboratory test of the cell phone later showed the presence of French’s DNA, according to court records.
French was arrested roughly two months after the shooting. During a police interview, he alleged that he had been robbed and chased by the teens prior to the shooting, saying one of them had a gun. Police found no gun belonging to the teenagers at the scene.
