Murder trial begins in 2011 home invasion slaying in Kansas City

The murder trial of a man accused in a August 2011 home invasion that left a man dead and a woman wounded began Tuesday inside a packed Jackson County courtroom.

Victor D. Vickers, 31, of Kansas City, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Edward L. Ewing. He also is accused in the shooting of the victim’s 29-year-old girlfriend.

According to court records, Vickers and two other men approached the woman as she returned home in the 7000 block of East 85th Terrace about 1 a.m. on Aug. 16, 2011. Vickers allegedly carried a handgun.

Ewing, the father of her children, was alone inside the residence asleep.

Vickers and the other men forced the woman to unlock the home’s front door. One of the men, later identified as Garron T. Briggs, forced her to lie on the living room floor while Vickers and the other man went into a bedroom and began looking for something they never found.

They repeatedly asked Ewing to tell them where the “stuff” was. One of the men then returned to the living room and said they couldn’t find what they were looking for. After Briggs told the man to “do it,” Briggs pointed a gun at the victim and shot her in the neck.

The woman, who laid on the floor and kept silent in hopes that Briggs would not shoot her again, soon heard gunshots from a bedroom.

After Briggs and the two others fled, the woman called 911 on her cellphone and crawled to the bedroom of her infant daughter, where she found Ewing’s lifeless body against a wall. He had been shot multiple times.

Briggs was charged as a co-defendant in the case. In March, he was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder in Ewing’s death.

In 2014, a federal jury convicted Vickers of conspiring to distribute less than 200 pounds of marijuana.

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 12:15 PM.