Residents of a south Kansas City neighborhood are living in fear after four people died in gun violence outside a local shopping center within three months.
On January 2, 36-year-old Sam Hughes and his 33-year-old brother Jeff Hughes were shot dead outside the Loma Vista Shopping Center at 87th and Blue Ridge.
Reginald Lamar, 48, was fatally shot inside the same shopping center in late October. About a month later, 20-year-old Dante Garth was gunned down in the parking lot.
The brothers’ cousin, Mary George, also worked at the shopping center but had decided to leave the job.
“Every single day that I worked there I was worried that something was going to happen,” she said.
Their mother asked “What is it about 87th and Blue Ridge Boulevard” as she mourned the immeasurable loss.
“It’s just a crime magnet that’s all it is. You’ve got five abandoned stores here,” said Hickman Mills United Neighborhoods co-chair Brandon Wright.
“We need the property owner to step up clean up the property add some security make this a place where people want to shop.”
