Stray bullet almost hit her in KC apartment. 50 rounds later, she wants change

It was Monday night, and Cassandra Chavez was eating leftovers on the couch in her living room when she heard gunshots outside of her apartment off East 87th and Drury Avenue in Kansas City.

At first, she thought they were fireworks.

“After about 15 rounds, I immediately was like, ‘I need to get down on the ground.’ That is a gunshot,” she said.

Chavez, who moved to the Urbane apartment complex in December, took to the floor on her stomach with her dog pressed underneath her. Then, the bullet came through the wall of her third-floor apartment, less than an inch from her head.

She could “feel the wind” from the bullet. Her ear started to ring.

“My whole apartment was gun powder, and I just laid on the floor for about two minutes just shaking uncontrollably. And by the time that I got up all I could do was, I was just looking in my mirror just feeling myself to make sure that I was not bleeding, and that I was okay, because I truly thought that I got shot,” Chavez said.

She called 911 and was met with a dial tone.

“It was just the worst experience of my life,” she said.

Everything ‘stripped away’

Chavez said she heard at least 50 rounds of gunfire that night. She took to the social media platform TikTok the next morning to detail her experience, and said Kansas City’s gun violence is “getting out of control.”

“I truly think that had I just been a little bit over, I would’ve died,” Chavez said in the June 24 video. “I guess the blessing is I’m alive and I will thank God for that every day, but also at what cost? Even sitting out here on my patio, I just feel like, just not safe,” she went on to say.

The shooting injured two people, who Kansas City police said were taken to a hospital in stable condition. The circumstances surrounding the incident were not known, but an investigation was ongoing, according to Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Officer Alayna Gonzalez.

In an interview with The Star, Chavez said the shooting makes her want to be anywhere but home. She described the aftermath of the shooting as a “war zone,” noting bullet holes across windows, doors and even cars.

“I don’t want to be here . . . Everything that I loved about that apartment just feels like it was stripped away from me in that moment,” she said

Calling for accountability

In an email sent to residents through the resident housing app Cobu, the staff at the complex said they “acknowledge the concern and impact” of the shooting on residents and “understand how unsettling events like this can be.”

“While incidents of this nature can unfortunately occur anywhere, please know that we will continue to work closely with BlackStack Security and KCPD, and continue on working to get our gate completed,” Urbane said in the email.

But Chavez feels like the complex is “trying not to take blame” by saying events such as the shooting can “occur anywhere.” Gates on the property will restrict non-resident access to the complex, but were not working this week.

Josh Weiss, who released a statement on behalf of Urbane, told The Star the gate “is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.”

That is something that has been told to residents for almost six months, according to Chavez.

“My car got broken into in February, and I went up to the office and I said ‘Hey, when are the gates going to be up?’ and they stated to me that they would be up the first week of March. It is now almost July, and they are still not operational,” she said.

“And they sent out an email almost three weeks to a month ago ... and it said the gates are almost up and running, you know, stand by ... and now they’re saying ‘We don’t have the right parts. We have to contact all these people.”

Chavez wants to break her lease, but says she was told she would have to pay three months rent in order to buy the lease out. Her rent is $1450 per month.

“We don’t have that kind of money, a lot of residents don’t, and it just really breaks my heart. I feel like they’re taking advantage of us and not caring about our safety. This was a massive shootout. This was not just like a one gunshot here; this was somebody with (what) sounded like an assault rifle,” she said.

‘Not backing down’

Repairs to apartment damage are in progress and the contract with Urbane’s on-site security company has been extended, Weiss said.

“We will continue to work directly with our residents to address their concerns, and transfer options are written in our lease agreements that allow residents to transfer within their current community and/or other Milhaus communities,” he said.

But Chavez is determined to see the complex tangibly change and said she is “not backing down.” Residents shouldn’t have to worry about their safety in their own apartment, she said.

“I don’t care what I have to do ... I’m going to make sure that I do whatever I can to get the word out there, and hopefully that this is enough for them to be like ‘Okay, if you want to move, you can move with no repercussions’ ... that is what I hope for,” she said.

Spreading the word isn’t just for her own sake, it’s for other residents in the complex too, Chavez said.

“I’m not dealing with this, and I’m not letting innocent families who work really hard and go home and just want to enjoy their time be put through this. This is not okay,” she said.

Maddie Carr

The Kansas City Star

Maddie Carr was a breaking news intern for The Star in 2025. A rising senior at Emporia State University, she is studying sociology and is also the editor-in-chief of ESU’s student newspaper, The Bulletin. In 2024, Maddie became the first college student to be named Kansas Journalist of the Year by the Kansas Press Association.