A fight between multiple people on a residential street near Kansas City’s Wilbur H. Dunn Park ended Thursday night with one man fatally shot, according to police.
Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a KCPD spokeswoman, said police were called around 8:45 p.m. to the 1800 block of East 67th Street, just off The Paseo, on what was initially reported as a disturbance where a verbal argument had turned physical. As the officers were responding, Gonzalez said, dispatchers informed them that a shooting had taken place.
Responding officers provided emergency medical aid to the lone victim of an apparent gunshot wound. He was found unresponsive in the street, taken by ambulance to the hospital and died there.
Gonzalez said there was a short window between the time the fight was reported and the shooting. It was not immediately known how many people were involved in the initial incident.
No persons of interest were in police custody as of late Thursday, Gonzalez said.
Homicide detectives and crime scene personnel responded to the scene in search of witnesses and evidence. Detectives were speaking with a large number of people to figure out precisely what happened, Gonzalez said.
She added that police would pursue answers to deliver “justice for this victim’s family.”
Information gathered early on by detectives indicated some type of verbal argument was likely the catalyst for the killing, Gonzalez said. She said the police department has been working Kansas City communities as part of its violence prevention efforts to help conflicts be resolved peacefully.
“I would really like to continue to see all of us really come together and work on this conflict resolution that we need so badly to develop, so that we can prevent these verbal arguments that don’t need to turn violent from escalating to that point,” she said.
The fatal shooting comes amid a staggering year of violence in Kansas City, which remains on pace with a homicide count in 2020 that set the record for the most in any year. As of Thursday, there have been 133 homicides in Kansas City so far in 2023, according to data maintained by The Star.
Kansas City police were asking anyone with information to contact detectives at 816-234-5043 or the TIPS Hotline anonymously at 816-474-TIPS.