3 killed in KC’s Santa Fe area this year. Here’s what experts say contributes to shootings
Kansas City’s Santa Fe neighborhood, which sits just below 27th Street and west of Indiana Avenue, has seen three homicides — all the result of gun violence — so far this year.
On Jan. 18, officers were called to a shooting at East 27th Street and Prospect Avenue at around 6:30 pm. They found 65-year old Ronnie Rhodes, who appeared to suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Rhodes was taken to a hospital, where he died five days later on Jan. 23.
About a month later, on Feb. 21, police were called to a parking lot at Linwood Boulevard and Agnes Avenue on a triple shooting. Officers discovered Ashley Pettiford, 31, and Jermaine Jackson, 34, fatally shot inside a vehicle. A 5-year-old was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Santa Fe is part of the city’s historic Prospect Corridor, a 30-block stretch from 18th to 40th streets bordering Prospect Ave.
In 2020, the rate of shootings in Santa Fe was more than twice as high as Jackson County’s overall shooting rate, according to the Star’s analysis of data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.
Experts say leaders should look at gun violence as a public health problem to be solved by investing in improvements in underlying life conditions that put people at greater or lesser risk: income, housing and food security, schools and living environments — what researchers call the social determinants of health.
But Santa Fe is marked by redlining and other structural inequalities. It had a higher than average eviction rate between 2000 and 2016 compared to the county’s rate.
Santa Fe is one of a handful of neighborhoods in a 20-by-25-block focus area of Aim4Peace, a gun violence prevention program operated through the Kansas City Health Department.
Modeled on the national Cure Violence public health approach, Aim4Peace represents one of Kansas City’s only viable strategies for reducing gun violence.
But last year, after a series of budget cuts, the city allocated less than $440,000 to the program.
Program leaders say Aim4Peace would need $1.2 million to be effective in its current operating area.