‘It was so unreal.’ Family mourns 18-year-old shot outside family home in Kansas City
When Kechell Hill heard shots outside her great grandparents’ home last month, she knew her brother was in trouble.
She ran to the front yard with her mother and found 18-year-old Joseph Hill lying on the ground. Kechell Hill tried talking to her brother, but he didn’t blink or speak. When she and her mom tried to pick him up, his body went limp.
Finally, when their mother flipped Joseph over, Kechell saw bullet holes. Her younger brother, who she grew up with and helped raise, had been shot in the ribs and was bleeding internally.
Officers responded around 4 p.m. Nov. 13 to the home in 4200 block of East 56th Street after police patrolling near the area heard multiple gunshots, according to Sgt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department.
Emergency medical crews took Joseph Hill to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“When he passed away, it was so unreal,” Kechell Hill told The Star. “It felt like it was a prank or a dream. It just didn’t sit right because I thought ‘I’m really sitting here watching my brother take his last few breaths.’”
His death was the 163rd homicide in Kansas City in 2023, according to data tracked by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings.
Later in November, it surpassed 2022 as the second deadliest year on record. As of Dec. 12, there have been 177 homicides in 2023, inching closer to the numbers in 2020, the city’s deadliest year ever recorded, when there were 182 killings.
‘He didn’t deserve to die like that.’
Growing up, Kechell Hill, Joseph Hill and his twin sister lived with their great grandparents in Kansas City. Their younger siblings, two more sets of twins, grew up in different homes.
She shared a room with her brother, helped change his diapers and played with him.
When Joseph was 8 or 9, Kechell Hill heard him sing for the first time and knew he had a special talent. They were baptized, and he performed at the church the next day. He later joined a choir and spent one summer performing with the KC Marching Cobras drill team.
The siblings, who were two years apart, were best friends, Kechell said. She considered herself a triplet, inseparable from her twin brother and sister.
Her brother was “goofy” and loved to make people laugh. He prioritized family and watched out for his siblings. Once, Kechell said, Joseph drove more than two hours each way to pick her up when she was stranded after a shift in Gladstone.
Joseph was away for long stretches, spending time in juvenile detention and the Division of Youth Services, a state agency that can take over custody and provides programs and services for youth who’ve had trouble with the law. This summer, when he graduated from high school through DYS, he told his family he never wanted to go back to jail.
He hoped to join the Army, taking after the legacy of service by his great grandfather, who was in the Navy. After serving, he wanted to become a nurse to help people.
Kechell said her brother’s past offenses had created issues between him and other people. Before Joseph was fatally shot in November, there had been several other shootings at her great grandfather’s house that the family believes were directed at him.
The family called police to the house each time, she said, but the shootings continued. Kechell made sure her youngest siblings spent most of their time at their mother’s house, so they wouldn’t be hurt.
On the day Joseph was killed, her great grandfather heard gunshots from the store and rushed home, fearing he would be in danger. He hopped off his bike and started performing CPR on his great grandson.
When officers arrived at the scene, she said they pushed her great grandfather and mother away from her brother. They also grabbed one of her other brothers, who tried to run through crime scene tape in search of Joseph.
“That was kind of dumb, but he was grieving. His brother had just passed,” Kechell said. “They wasn’t trying to calm nobody down. They were just pushing everybody and being extremely rude.”
Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City Police Department, said she couldn’t speak to the specific situation, but said officers are trained to respond to all types of scenes and help everyone involved.
Responses from officers, she said, may look different depending on the situation at each scene. One of their goals is to ensure no evidence at the crime scene is tampered with or destroyed, she noted.
“The integrity of the crime scene is vital for detectives and crime scene personnel to assist with developing a person of interest and telling the story of what happened,” Gonzalez said in an email. “In the case of a homicide, officers witness the pain friends and family suffer from, which is why a great amount of effort is made to gain control of the crime scene, so we can work towards closure for the victim’s loved ones.”
Kechell said she worries because the person who killed her brother hasn’t been caught and thinks police may not be doing enough to help her family get justice.
“Yes, he was a young person in the streets, but he had a good life,” she said. “He didn’t deserve to die like that just like no other person or no other kid should die like that.”
Police said detectives are still working to identify a person of interest in the shooting. Two subjects of interest were previously taken into custody for questioning and released pending further investigation.
This story was originally published December 14, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
