Three months after fatal shooting of Independence teen, prosecutors file charges
Nearly three months after police found a missing Independence woman dead in south Kansas City, charges have been filed against a man accused of fatally shooting her.
Eric R. Phillips II was charged with first-degree murder, armed criminal action and abandonment of a corpse in Jackson County court Wednesday for his alleged role in the Nov. 28, 2025 fatal shooting of 18-year-old Elayjah Murray.
Murray was found dead in south Kansas City on Nov. 29 after her family had reported her missing the day before.
“We’re just looking for the why,” Murray’s aunt, Janeva Hamilton, previously said in a news conference regarding her niece’s death. “She wasn’t in the streets. She didn’t have a heart to do anything bad or wrong to anyone. So why? Why? Why her?”
Phillips was initially charged on Dec. 3, 2024, but the case was under seal, according to a news release from Jazzlyn Johnson, director of communications for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office.
Phillips is not currently in police custody, and investigators are working to locate him, Johnson said. After he is apprehended, his bond will be set at $350,000 cash, according to a warrant issued in support of his arrest.
Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts is asked to contact the Independence Police Department at 816-325-7300, or the anonymous Crime Stoppers TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).
‘What did you do to her?’
According to a probable cause statement in support of Phillips’ arrest, Kansas City police responded to an apartment complex just before 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 28 after receiving a 911 call that a woman had been “shot in the face in a car and was not breathing.”
Officers located the caller, who was sitting inside the door of the apartment “hysterically crying,” the statement said. The woman appeared to be in a “state of shock,” but told officers that Phillips had picked her up in a black Chevrolet and driven the pair to another residence, where he allegedly shot Murray three times in the face before driving the woman back to the apartment.
At the apartment, a second woman approached officers with Ring camera footage, according to the probable cause statement. She told officers the video captured two people, whom she identified as the 911 caller and Phillips, “arguing and yelling.”
The woman said she heard Phillips yell that he “would take care of it,” after the 911 caller mentioned that there was a dead person in the back seat of a black Chevrolet Malibu, the statement said.
In a second interview with investigators on Nov. 28, the 911 caller told investigators Phillips picked up her and Murray, with whom she said she was in a romantic relationship, in his vehicle. A relative of the caller was also in the vehicle.
Phillips allegedly drove the group to various locations throughout the night and early morning before they ended up at a residence in Kansas City, according to the statement. At 2:50 a.m., she said, Phillips “abruptly” said he needed to take her, her relative and Murray home.
The group arrived at a residence just before 3 a.m., she told investigators. There, she made a video on Instagram in the car, showing Phillips with a tan gun in his lap. Her relative who had been in the car stayed at the residence.
The caller put Murray’s address into Phillips’ phone, according to the probable cause statement. Close to Murray’s residence, Murray told Phillips to turn onto a side street and let her out of the vehicle.
When the 911 caller opened Murray’s door, Phillips allegedly shot Murray three times in the face, according to the statement. He then turned to the caller, reportedly telling her, “you gonna be next if you don’t get back in this car.”
Video footage obtained from an intersection near the scene corroborated the 911 caller’s statement, according to the probable cause statement. After the shots were fired, the woman was seen entering the passenger side of the vehicle before it drove away.
The woman repeatedly asked Phillips what he did, and “why he would do something like that,” the statement said. He responded, allegedly telling her he had been “told” to kill her cousin and Murray.
The man allegedly tried to console the 911 caller and hugged her, the woman told investigators. She said she asked Phillips to drive to a hospital, but he didn’t. He reportedly told her not to “turn around and look” at Murray in the backseat.
Phillips then drove the woman to a relative’s house with the gun in his lap, according to the probable cause statement. On the way there, he allegedly called someone, asking them to stay up, saying he’d be there soon and that he “had a problem.”
Both Murray’s and Phillips’ cellphones were found in dumpsters at separate gas stations on Nov. 28, according to the probable cause statement. Murray’s body was found in south Kansas City later that morning.
Data collected from Phillips’ cellphone revealed his phone had been in the area where Murray’s body was located around 5:30 a.m. that day, the statement said.
Ring camera footage from just after 4 a.m. on Nov. 28 captured the 911 caller “screaming that she was scared over and over,” before Phillips allegedly forced her to an apartment’s front door.
At the door, Phillips is allegedly heard telling the woman to “go to her mother,” according to the video footage. A woman can be heard asking Phillips, “What did you do to her?” and “Did you hit her?”
Phillips can then allegedly be heard referencing “the girlfriend” before leaving the apartment complex, according to the statement.
Murray, a freshman studying nursing at Missouri State University, had returned home for Thanksgiving at the time of the shooting. Her family remembers her as a talkative young woman who, according to her grandmother, Jearl Collins, was “the life of the party.”
“She was a sister, a big sister, she was a niece, she was a cousin, and she was a friend to so many people, and this isn’t fair … she did deserve to see tomorrow,” Collins said.
