After another senseless shooting of a child, Kansas City should say enough is enough

As another family mourns for a child killed in an insane hail of gunfire, the wider Kansas City community should look within and declare that enough is enough.

Amorian S.L. Hale was felled at the age of 3, another in a too long line of children whose lives have been cut short or seriously damaged. Five children have been killed in Kansas City this year alone.

Someone knows who sprayed the family home with more than a dozen bullets. Someone knows Amorian’s killer. Everyone should know, as Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has put it, that it is “our community’s duty” to protect children from harm.

Reward money has grown to more than $2,500 for anyone who has valuable information in the case. Call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).

Perhaps that will produce a useful lead in the investigation. Yet decency and doing the right thing should not depend on reward money.

We, like Mayor Sly James, can lament the “armed idiots” in our midst. But at some point people must take responsibility and do something about it.

This story was originally published June 3, 2015 at 5:19 PM with the headline "After another senseless shooting of a child, Kansas City should say enough is enough."