KC skate center will require chaperones after fight. But will it put kids at risk?
Akeela Williams rarely lets her 14-year-old son leave the house without her.
She, like many Kansas City residents, worries about gun violence. She doesn’t want her son to become another statistic.
On New Year’s Eve, she feared that nightmare had come true. Williams let her son go with her 14-year-old nephew to a party at Winnwood Skate Center, which crowds of teens later fled in panic, believing they heard gunshots.
When Williams’ son stepped out of her car that evening, he said he had some concerns something bad might happen. Within an hour, her nephew called and told her he’d escaped through the back door because of a shooting, but he couldn’t find Williams’ son.
“My heart is really racing,” Williams said. “I’m calling my son, calling him and calling him, and he’s not answering. What does a parent do at that time? You just start praying.”
As she approached the skating rink, Williams saw teens everywhere, but she felt a bit of calm to see law enforcement officials had the area blocked off and secured. She kept calling her son until she finally reached him.
“It was a sense of relief to hear him picking up the phone,” she said.
Then Williams called her nephew, found a place to pick them both up and rushed out.
The New Year’s Eve incident
But what had startled the teens was not, in fact, the sound of gunfire.
Luke Powell, a co-owner of Winnwood since October 2021, said a gun never entered the facility that night. Instead, Powell said the panic ensued after a girl hit a boy in the face. The boy responded by punching a pinball machine, shattering the glass.
Customers ran, thinking the noise was a gunshot.
Clay County sheriff’s deputies responded around 10 p.m. to the skating rink, where they found crowds of teens outside spilling into a nearby Target parking lot. Kansas City police also arrived to help with crowd control.
A fight later broke out in the Target parking lot, and deputies Tased a 14-year-old boy who they saw reach for his waistband. Deputies took the boy into custody and found a loaded handgun in his waistband, which he had been accused of using earlier in the evening to rob another teen’s shoes. There was no evidence the gun had been fired.
According to the sheriff’s department, Clay County juvenile authorities declined to take the boy into custody, and he was released to a parent. A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department said they weren’t provided additional information on why the teen wasn’t arrested.
While federal laws prohibits minors from possessing guns and require handgun purchasers to be at least 21, a 2021 Missouri law says local and state officials don’t need to enforce federal gun policies that aren’t part of state law. Missouri sets no minimum age for minors to possess a gun, but it is a misdemeanor to sell or supply firearms to minors.
Kevin Jamison, an attorney in Gladstone, said he’s worked with other juveniles who were arrested when they had a firearm, including in Clay County. He said he was surprised to learn that the teen wasn’t taken into custody for the alleged armed robbery or to at least question how he had obtained a gun.
After reviewing surveillance footage, Powell said the boy who was later found with the handgun hadn’t stepped inside Winnwood on New Year’s Eve. Powell said it wasn’t his place to judge the decisions of the law enforcement officials to release the 14-year-old, but he worried a lack of consequences could spur more issues and further feed the violence, like the six-year-old in Virginia who shot his teacher last week.
“What stops this kid from doing the same thing?” he asked.
A place to go
The incident forced Winnwood to implement a policy that it had long avoided.
The skate rink now requires all customers under the age of 18 to be accompanied by a parent or guardian who is at least 21. Kansas City police had recommended the policy before the New Year’s Eve incident.
Other entertainment facilities around the area, like B&D Skating Rink in Independence and Dave and Buster’s in Kansas City, Kansas, also have policies requiring minors to be accompanied by a chaperone. After 9 p.m. each night, anyone under age 25 must be accompanied by a chaperone at Main Event, an entertainment facility in Kansas City.
Powell and Winnwood co-owner Jim Foulk are hoping to amend their policy soon to allow minors who own their own skates to come without a chaperone, believing that kids who have invested in skates are coming because they want to practice their skating skills.
While other entertainment and skating facilities across the metro have implemented similar policies over time, Powell said Winnwood didn’t want to be exclusionary. Growing up in a low-income household with parents who worked long hours, he said he knows firsthand that chaperone policies can be a burden for families.
He already sees the policy having an impact on kids.
One child who typically comes every Saturday for skating lessons while his parents work has been noticeably absent since the policy was enacted. Other Winnwood regulars have also been no-shows since the policy was put in place.
“The last thing that we want to do is give them no place to go,” Powell said. “Roller rinks are traditionally facilities where parents and kids treat them as a second home, and you create relationships there.
“We want to make sure that our kids of today have that ability to continue to have a place to go where they can do that along with ensuring that a facility like this stays safe.”
For the most part, Powell said Winnwood has heard positive feedback from parents about the new rule, but he knows the chaperone policy punishes single parents who work at night and want a low-cost activity and safe place for their kids. Those families also comprise many of the rink’s regulars.
So far, Winnwood has been in contact with the organization Big Brothers, Big Sisters to have mentors help with chaperoning. Some of the regular adult skaters have also shown interest in volunteering, too, Powell said.
‘Just the world we’re living in’
Williams was one of the single mothers who talked with Powell after the incident.
She worries often about her son’s safety, in part because she knows what it’s like to lose a family member to gun violence. In April 2021, her 12-year-old nephew BJ Henderson was shot to death outside a Leavenworth pharmacy while running errands with his sister.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to feel this pain that our family feels,” she said. “So it’s very hard for me to let (my son) get out.”
While her son isn’t a regular at the skate rink, she talked with Powell about safety, improvements he’s made to the rink, and the impact the new chaperone policy would have on parents like her.
But she’s not sure how much good an adult presence can do to stop violence.
By the end of the call, Powell took down her son and nephews’ names and said their next visit would be free.
But Williams said she’ll have to see more security changes at Winnwood, like metal detectors or pat-downs to ensure patrons can’t bring guns and other weapons, before she’ll feel safe letting her son skate there again. While the roller rink does contract security guards, Powell said he’s reluctant to enact other security measures because he wants to avoid making customers feel like criminals when they walk through the doors.
Williams doesn’t blame Winnwood for the New Year’s Eve incident, or fault them for her fears for her son’s safety. It’s just hard, she said, to feel safe from gun violence anywhere these days.
“It’s just the world we’re living in,” Williams said. “Schools, airports, you name it. Everyone needs to step up to the plate and make our world safe.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
