9 injured in mass shooting on Kansas City’s Troost Avenue early Saturday
Nine people were injured in a flurry of gunfire in a crowd on Troost Avenue early Saturday morning, Kansas City police said.
Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Police Department, said in an email that police were called to the 7900 block of Troost around 4 a.m. on a sound of shots call. As they arrived, they found a large crowd that was leaving the area and three women who had been shot.
The three women had non-life-threatening injuries and were taken to area hospitals for treatment, Gonzalez said.
Police were notified of six other shooting victims who were taken to area hospitals in private vehicles. All were adults who had non-life-threatening injuries, she said.
The social media news page KC Knowledges posted a video it said was recorded in the area, near East 80th Street and Troost, early Saturday morning, in which scores of gunshots can be heard ringing out in the night. The page said that more than 65 shots were fired at an event.
Kate Fowler, who lives on East 75th Street near Troost, a short distance north of the location police reported, said she and her husband woke up to a bullet hole in a front window on their home and a bullet that had landed on their living room floor. After speaking with neighbors, she learned that shots had been heard in the area between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Friday and then around 4 a.m. Saturday.
At one point Friday night, Fowler had fallen asleep on the couch, just a few feet from where the bullet landed, she said.
“Honestly, I’m glad I slept through it, because I probably would have freaked out,” she said. “We’ve lived here for two years, we’ve been wanting to move pretty much since we got the place — not because of the neighbors or the community or anything like that — just the fact that we live right on 75th Street, and it is so unpredictable. This has further solidified that for us, which is unfortunate, because I think this neighborhood could be something great.”
Fowler said she hears gunshots in the neighborhood at least once a week.
“It’s just unfortunate circumstances with some of the businesses around here,” she said. “It’s not the residents, it’s the traffic and the foot traffic, and the lack of resources that causes this type of thing, in my opinion.”
