Witnesses play crucial role in reducing KC’s homicides
When Kansas City detectives rushed to the intersection of Truman Road and Woodland Avenue shortly after 1 a.m. on Aug. 24, they found Darrell Fennell’s lifeless body on the sidewalk.
They also found a surprise: witnesses who would talk to them.
In a homicide-plagued city where the “don’t snitch” attitude has been all-too-pervasive for years, getting witnesses to talk to law enforcement officials has been a “very stubborn problem,” as Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said this week.
But fortunately this did not hold true on that early August morning.
According to police reports, four witnesses offered fairly consistent descriptions of a suspect who had walked up to Fennell, 30, and shot him multiple times. One witness — who said he knew the suspect as “Red” and had spent time hanging out with him —observed the suspect “standing over the victim, firing a black handgun.” Another witness followed the suspect until he “turned and ran into the TB Watkins Housing Complex.”
Two days later, police went to the complex and arrested a suspect in Fennell’s murder.
This case helps illustrate why Baker says law enforcement officials rely on witnesses as their best source of information about a crime.
It’s also why Police Chief Darryl Forté — as he did at this month’s police board meeting — often talks about the need to improve relations between his department and residents, especially in the urban core.
As Forte notes, people often know what’s really going on in their neighborhoods. The police must be able to get access to that information after crimes occur, especially murders.
It helps that Kansas City has experienced a drop in homicides so far this year. Despite a bloody September, the murder count at the end of the month stood at 54, a favorable comparison to the average of 80 homicides by that time over the last four years.
Fewer homicides mean that police and prosecutors have more time to work on cases and take killers off the street. Also, community leaders recognize that they and their neighbors can make an impact on a problem that no longer seems out of control, Baker said.
Improved cooperation between the police and the prosecutor’s office may also be helping.
Toward that goal, Baker said her policy is to have a prosecutor at every murder scene. That gives her office a better idea of what the case is all about. And prosecutors can work with police officers at that time and immediately afterward to try to make sure strong evidence is gathered.
“We’re engaged,” Baker said, adding that prosecutors want to help police as quickly as possible find suspects and clear crimes.
But no one said reducing Kansas City’s chronically high homicide rate would be easy, and September was a painful reminder of that.
The month began horrifically, on Sept. 2, when police were called to Woodbridge Lane, just east of Wornall Road.
They discovered three people who had been shot to death: Alice Lorene Hurst, 88, and her son, Darrel Hurst, 63, as well as Suzanne Choucroun, 69. Two additional persons were found severely beaten inside their home; George Taylor, 80, and Ann Taylor, 86, both died a few days later in a hospital.
That night, a tip from the public led police to find and arrest Brandon B. Howell. He was walking along an interstate north of the Missouri River, with a shotgun concealed in a pants leg, according to court documents. Baker charged Howell with all five homicides.
On Sept. 5, Sherrill Collins, 45, was shot to death in the 7400 block of E. 118th Terrace. The next day, the body of Maurice B. Brown, 48, was found surrounded by 11 shell casings at 49th Street and College Avenue.
Terez M. Racy, 25, was shot Sept. 14 while sitting in a car in the 3800 block of Garfield Avenue, and driven to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Three more homicides occurred within a short span.
Dominique C. Johnson, 23, was shot to death on Sept. 20 in a parking lot of an apartment complex in the 8800 block of Crystal Avenue.
The body of shooting victim David L. Spry, 56, was found on Sept. 21 in a front yard in the 5600 block of E. 16th Terrace.
And on Sept. 23, coworkers discovered the body of Teresa E. Kellough, 49, in a house in the 4200 block of Forest Avenue. She had been shot to death.
Each of those murders is a setback in the quest for a safe city.
But with three months until year’s end, Mayor Sly James, Forté, Baker and others who have been leading the efforts to reduce homicides in Kansas City have a good chance to keep the total below 100 for the first time since 2004.
That would be a good start, with much more work to be done.
This story was originally published October 2, 2014 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Witnesses play crucial role in reducing KC’s homicides."