(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Kansas City suffered a violent weekend as three separate shootings impacted the city’s downtown over 30 minutes late Sunday.
The shootings come as Kansas City, Missouri, has already faced a violent year, with 59 homicides having already been recorded since the start of the year — the most since 2019.
The incidents began on Sunday at 5:47 p.m. when officers were dispatched to a chicken restaurant downtown. According to an incident summary from the Kansas City Police Department, a man entered the restaurant “saying he had been shot.”
Twenty minutes later, officers responded to the scene of a separate shooting. In that instance, the victim arrived at a local hospital via a private vehicle, according to the incident report.
The last shooting occurred six minutes later; officers responded to a shooting to find an unresponsive victim suffering from a gunshot wound in a grassy area near an intersection. Officers attempted life-saving measures until the arrival of EMS, according to the Kansas City Police,
The three men survived, with two remaining in critical condition, according to ABC News’ Kansas City affiliate KMBC-TV.
The brief period shattered by violence on Sunday paints a bleak picture of downtown Kansas City, where gun violence is so prevalent it is often underreported by media and unsolved by law enforcement.
Since the start of the year the city has suffered 59 homicides, according to analysis from the Kansas City Police, which does not consider officer-involved shootings in their count. While some of the homicides are caused by an argument or stem from domestic violence, the cause of most shootings is unknown by law enforcement. What is more apparent to law enforcement is the weapon of choice — nearly 90% involve some kind of firearm.
Kansas City, Missouri, and neighboring Kansas City, Kansas, have also had several shootings affecting minors last month. On April 13, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot by a resident after Yarl approached the wrong home while picking up his twin brothers. Last Wednesday in Kansas City, Kansas, a young boy was fatally shot while playing in his front yard in broad daylight, according to KMBC. His family said 6-year-old Sir-Antonio Brown was riding his bike when three men in black face masks began firing.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas co-chairs Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of mayors organized by Everytown for Gun Safety working to reduce gun violence.
“Just like how Big Tobacco needed to be held accountable for its role in promulgating a generation of lung cancer patients, so too does the gun industry need to be held accountable for its role in our gun violence epidemic,” Lucas said at a summit last summer on gun violence prevention.
Last year, the city suffered 155 firearm-related homicides, according to police data. Based on the current rate of violence, the city is currently on track to break last year’s record.
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.