KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Children inside a home daycare found themselves trapped near a crime scene Wednesday night. A deadly shooting led to a standoff. What happened next witnesses called chaos.
Kansas City Police shut down access to the Longview Square strip mall and closed the streets around it.
“They said I can’t (get by) because it’s been a homicide and a standoff, I don’t know how to get around it,” said Charles Stapo, who lives nearby.
When Stapo got off a metro bus, he borrowed a phone to call his wife.
“They’re not allowing me to get to my kids,” said a woman whose children were stuck inside a daycare.
“I just want to get them home,” the woman said.
But they were stuck inside. A few doors away, tactical officers inside an armored car were searching for homicide suspects.
Around 4 p.m., one block away, someone shot and killed 20-year-old Maurice West outside the Jefferson Place apartments.
Witnesses told police an argument between four men became violent. Detectives thought two suspects ran into this house. A standoff lasted until 8:30 p.m., when four women walked out.
With no sign of their suspects, police waited for a search warrant to seize any evidence potentially inside.
However, officers left the scene without making arrest.
“It was chaos, just pure chaos,” Stapo said.
