‘It’s tragic’: Strawberry Hill residents stunned by fatal shooting outside Sammy’s Tavern
Update: Police have identified the victim killed as 33-year-old Michael A. Rehard.
They heard multiple gunshots. Then the screaming started.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, Kansas City, Kansas, police responded to a shooting in the 200 block of North 6th Street, near Sammy’s Tavern, officials said.
The afternoon after one person was killed in the gunfire and two others were wounded, residents of the Strawberry Hill neighborhood visited on porches, recalling the commotion hours earlier. Hoping it wasn’t someone they knew.
The Star spoke with four people who live in the area and witnessed the aftermath of the shooting. The people asked not to have their names used.
It was a little after 1 a.m., one neighbor said, when he heard seven or eight gunshots, then heard the sounds of people and commotion in the street.
When the gunfire started, the 11-year-old daughter of a woman who lives across the street came running to her. They heard screams. When the woman looked out the window she first noticed the people running frantically in all directions. Then she noticed many of them were dressed in beautiful outfits, as if they’d come from an event.
Four neighbors, including one man who’s lived on Tenny Avenue for about 35 years, said while there’s occasionally a fight at the bar, they didn’t recall another incident in which it escalated to gunshots.
When the gunfire began a little after 1 a.m. Sunday, one woman who lives next to the tavern said the shots seemed to last as long as it took her to round up all four of her cats to take cover in the bathroom with her.
By the time she walked outside to see what was happening, police were already there.
She saw one of the victims sitting on the ground, coherent. When she walked up to the bar door to see if there was anything she could do to help the bar owner, she saw the body of the person killed, laying on the ground.
As of Monday morning, police have not yet released the name of the person killed, or the identities of those wounded.
Wesley McKain, a board member with the Strawberry Hill Neighborhood Association, said while people sometimes shoot off guns near the river, he can’t remember the last time someone was killed by a bullet in the historic neighborhood.
He set off on foot Sunday afternoon to talk with some neighbors. He feared he’d come across flowers placed outside someone’s house. Feared it would be someone he knew.
“It’s tragic anytime someone gets killed, but I know a lot of people here on the hill and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t anyone I knew, and if it was one of our neighbors, to see if the neighborhood association could do something for them,” he said.
Neighbors feared the same. One said the bar owner was at the tavern until sun-up cleaning up blood.
The tavern remained closed early Sunday afternoon.
Two other people were fatally shot in Kansas City, Kansas, over the weekend. Hours before the tavern shooting, police responded to a triple shooting in the 1800 block of North 26th Street where two people were found dead and a third person was hospitalized.
Kansas City, Kansas, Mayor Tyrone Garner spoke out following the bloodshed.
“We have to move beyond being reactive with sending thoughts and prayers,” Mayor Garner wrote on Facebook Sunday. “Let’s be proactive in stopping violence, by learning to deescalate, incorporating conflict resolution, respecting and valuing each other, but most of all, loving one another.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2022 at 11:13 AM.
