KC football player shot walking girlfriend to bus stop remembered as ‘gentle giant’
When Rashawnda Perry-Townsend heard shots near her Kansas City home last month, she feared the worst.
Her son Xavier Townsend-Keith, 23, had just walked his girlfriend to a bus stop near their home. Usually, he stayed a bit after she left, taking advantage of free Wi-Fi at the station to download shows and movies to watch at home.
After she heard gunshots, Perry-Townsend called to make sure he was all right. A stranger picked up and told her that her son had been shot. She ran from their home until she saw the ambulance, and then started talking to her son as he lay injured.
“Xavier breathe, just breathe,” Perry-Townsend told him. “Mommy’s here.”
A first responder told Perry-Townsend that once she started talking to him, her son fought harder to stay alive.
Police responded around 1 p.m. on May 28 to the intersection of East 51st Street and Prospect Avenue, where they found Townsend-Keith lying on the sidewalk near a bus stop, according to Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the Kansas City Police Department. He had multiple gunshot wounds and was transported to a hospital.
Police didn’t allow Perry-Townsend to ride in the ambulance with her son. The emergency medical technicians told her he was still breathing during the drive, but died once they arrived at the hospital.
Townsend-Keith’s death was the 60th homicide in Kansas City in 2024, according to data tracked by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. There had been 71 killings at the same time last year.
Police have no suspects in custody.
It was not his mother’s first experience with tragedy. Townsend-Keith is the third child that Perry-Townsend has lost unexpectedly. She has three surviving daughters.
Her son Desean Parker, also 23 at the time, was fatally shot on New Year’s Eve in 2016 while leaving a club near Ninth Street and Broadway. Two years ago, Townsend’s 26-year-old daughter Diamond Marchbanks was driving to Kansas City for her birthday when a driver lost control of their car during a storm and struck her vehicle, ejecting her from the car and killing her.
“I have been through a lot, and people say ‘we don’t know how you’re still standing,’” Perry-Townsend said. “I say I have faith. The Lord has got me here for some reason. He has given me the strength, and I’m here.”
Townsend’s son didn’t have life insurance, so she created a GoFundMe to help pay for expenses related to his death.
‘Gentle giant’
Loved ones knew Townsend-Keith as a “gentle giant.” The semi-pro football player with the KC Legion towered over others at around 6 feet, 5 inches tall. He could easily eat eight helpings at family dinners.
He spoke softly, cracked jokes and loved to make others laugh.
Perry-Townsend’s son would stop what he was doing to assist others, she said, whether it was an older person at the grocery store or someone who needed help lifting a heavy object he could pick up with ease.
He tried a handful of sports growing up — basketball, football and track and field among them — but Townsend-Keith was drawn to football. Win or lose, he cheered for the Chiefs and would tell off anyone who spoke poorly of the team.
After high school, he earned a scholarship for the track and field team at Butler Community College, but he wanted to try and make it in football. Since he hadn’t followed players’ usual paths of playing at a four-year college before entering the NFL draft, he hoped to make it from semi-pro to the United Football League and eventually to a major league team.
Townsend-Keith found the KC Legion through his cousin, who also played for coach Joseph Day and remains close to him. Eventually, Townsend-Keith also joined the team and became part of a 62-person roster of the semi-pro football squad.
Townsend-Keith and Day grew close in the three years they knew each other, and his coach often picked him up in the same area where he was eventually shot, taking him to and from practices or outings with Day’s family.
The tight end, who also helped in a variety of other positions, was one of the top five players on the team, Day told The Star. He worked to better himself each practice, often opting into steep uphill runs at the end of practices.
For Townsend-Keith’s first game with the KC Legion, the team drove to Iowa and played in 117 degree weather, Day said. Townsend-Keith played for as long as he could in the extreme heat. He wound up hospitalized for an injury, but was most concerned about how the team was doing while he was away, Day said.
Townsend-Keith formed special bonds with all of his fellow players. He was a friendly presence who encouraged them when they had a hard practice or game, and he never turned down an invitation from his coach for team bonding activities like fishing trips and dinners.
“He was an inspiration to be around,” Day said. “He was always trying to make his life better.”
Last July, he was riding the bus home from practice when an Uber hit it. Townsend-Keith had been standing and fell back because of the crash, hurting his shoulder. After he got home, he bawled because of the pain. His mother rushed him to the hospital, where they learned that his rotator cuff was torn and he had a slipped disc in the back of his neck.
It hurt Townsend-Keith that he couldn’t play football for most of the season, his mother said. Instead, he helped his mother around the house and took walks at the YMCA to try to stay in shape.
But Townsend-Keith was still committed to his team, even while injured, Day said.
He attended every practice and game to encourage his teammates, train them on his position, carry equipment and clean up the field. That level of commitment is rare in players at the semi-pro level, Day said, because they pay to join the team and don’t receive compensation for their efforts.
“He was just an amazing kid,” Day said. “An amazing guy.”
Not long before his death in May, Townsend-Keith underwent surgery for his rotator cuff injury. Once he felt better, he hoped to try out for the United Football League. Because of the injury, he also considered paths outside of football. He told his mom that, if he couldn’t play anymore, he wanted to return to college to study ministry and work with children.
While Day disbanded the KC Legion last season due to his own health issues, he said his former players have reached out to him nonstop since he posted about Townsend-Keith’s death on Facebook.
He said both he and his former players were shocked by the news. They didn’t understand why someone so caring and friendly was taken from them.
“And I didn’t have an answer to that,” Day said. “All I could tell them was what I knew, that he got shot at the corner of 51st and Prospect. … I still don’t know all the specifics of it. I don’t want to know. I just know that it was absolutely too close to home for me.”
‘We’re living like a shell’
Before his death, Townsend-Keith served as a protector for his mom and sisters.
Family meant everything to him. He loved to spend time with his nieces and nephews, and learned not long before his death that one of his sisters was pregnant. Perry-Townsend said he was thrilled to become an uncle again and welcome a new baby to the family.
Once he started making money, whether through football or another path, Townsend-Keith would tell his mom that he planned to help take care of his sisters, their kids and his mom. As the remaining man of the house, he saw it as his responsibility.
“I want my family to be OK,” he told his mom. “I’m not gonna stop fighting until y’all are OK.”
As he did for his girlfriend of two years on the day he was shot, he often walked his sisters and mom to the bus stop or drove them where they needed to go whenever he could. He wanted to protect them and often reminded them to call him when they got to work and when they were heading home, so that he could walk them back.
Now, whatever sense of safety they felt they had with Townsend-Keith’s presence has been shattered with his death.
Since then, his mom hasn’t left her home, and said she’s placed extra cameras around the outside. She and her daughter don’t spend time outside and won’t post information about what they’re up to on social media. They’ve hired security to help keep watch, so they feel more protected.
After Townsend-Keith’s funeral, she hopes to move out of Kansas City, so their family can make a fresh start in a place that feels safe.
“We’re living like a shell right now,” his mother said.
