Man killed by KCK police during traffic stop was unarmed delivery driver, mother says
The cries and pleas of her son still echo in Pauletta Johnson’s mind, hours after she received a heart-wrenching phone call from him, moments away from being shot and killed by a Kansas City, Kansas, police officer Wednesday night.
Johnson identified her 25-year-old son, Amaree’ya Henderson of Kansas City, as the man killed by a police officer during a traffic stop near the 12th Street bridge that crosses the Kansas River.
Henderson had completed his final DoorDash delivery for the evening in the Argentine section of Kansas City, Kansas, and was on his way home with his girlfriend when he was pulled over, Johnson said.
Henderson’s girlfriend, Shakira Hill, called Johnson using the FaceTime app on her cellphone. Through the FaceTime call, Johnson was able to get an impression of what happened during the traffic stop and the shooting.
Henderson, anxious about the traffic stop, pleaded for his mother to help him, asking for her to drive to where he was pulled over.
“’I fear for my life, can you get here. It doesn’t feel right,’” he said, as Johnson told The Star early Thursday.
“He was scared for his life. He told me to come because he was scared for his life.”
According to Johnson, the officer did not tell Henderson why he was being pulled over. Instead, the officer instructed Henderson to hand over his license and registration.
When the officer called for another officer to assist him, Henderson may have tried to drive away, Johnson said. The officer shot Henderson and he collided with another vehicle.
“He was scared for his life. In life, you fight, flight or freeze,” Johnson said. “He got so scared that he tried to go where he could be safe, be seen and not be harmed and he still was harmed.”
“You heard the gunshots and the phone shut off,” Johnson said.
Few details from police
The Kansas City Police Department, which is investigating the shooting as an outside agency from the Missouri side of the state line, has provided little information about what happened.
Officer Donna Drake, a police department spokeswoman, said Wednesday night that the shooting happened about 8:30 p.m. after an officer pulled over a vehicle in the 1100 block of Metropolitan Avenue for a traffic violation.
Drake said a “confrontation ensued” during the traffic stop that ended with the police officer fatally shooting the driver.
Homicide detectives were in the beginning stages of their investigation, she said. Among the witnesses to be interviewed was a passenger in the car.
Drake said the Kansas City, Kansas, officer had minor injuries and was taken to a hospital. It was unclear how the officer was injured.
On Thursday morning, Drake declined to provide any more details about the shooting. She did not respond to questions about whether the man killed was armed or not.
Later Thursday, the police department confirmed the identity of Henderson as the man killing in the shooting.
Since late 2022, Kansas City, Missouri, police have led investigations of shootings involving Kansas City, Kansas, police officers as part of an agreement between the two agencies.
Once the investigation is complete, Drake said, findings would be forwarded to the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office.
The district attorney will decide whether the use of force was justified under Kansas law.
‘Scared for his life’
Johnson said her son had lost a job and fell on hard times. He was making deliveries for DoorDash to make ends meet.
“My baby, he’s not a killer. He’s not a drug dealer,” Johnson said. “He’s not harmful. He was scared for his life.”
Johnson noted that Henderson had experienced a bad run-in with police in 2016, when police accused him of walking through, or too close to, a crime scene and handcuffed him. Henderson was a teenager at the time — it was the same year he graduated from Central High School.
“He’s been hurt before by the police, he was scared,” Johnson said.
Henderson’s younger sister, Paulina Johnson, joined their mother in saying that Henderson would not have been carrying a weapon.
“My brother wasn’t a menace to society,” Paulina Johnson said. “He wasn’t a drug dealer. He wasn’t any of the things that society will try to label us as. For him to be gunned down like that and murdered from a traffic stop and he did everything that they said was crazy.”
Lora McDonald, executive director of MORE2, a social activist organization that monitors law enforcement in Kansas City, Kansas, said the group is recommending that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation review the shooting and all further investigations.
“We don’t know much about the circumstances of the shooting, and the lack of transparency from KCKPD is nothing new,” McDonald said.
She questioned the value of having Kansas City, Missouri, police investigate as an outside agency since a former member of that department, Karl Oakman, is now the police chief for the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department.
“There could be conflicts,” McDonald said.
She also noted that the Kansas City Police Department has a history of refusing to provide charging documents to prosecutors in cases that ultimately led to its own officers being convicted of violent crimes against Black people.
Nikki Richardson, executive director and co-founder of Justice for Wyandotte, said her group has been monitoring police shootings in Kansas City, Kansas.
“All of the cases have been different, but they’re either linked to a substance abuse call or what appears to be a mental health concern and then this most recent one was a traffic stop. Scenarios which shouldn’t lead to a fatality when you’re being involved with an officer but in these cases, they all have been,” Richardson said.
Richardson, who also is a member of the law enforcement advisory board for the United Government of Wyandotte County, said Justice for Wyandotte has requested video footage captured on the officers’ body cameras.
The shooting Wednesday marks the third involving Kansas City, Kansas, police so far in 2023. One other was fatal.
On Feb. 4, Kansas City, Kansas, police shot and killed a man in the 5400 block of Haskell Avenue after he allegedly fled on a bicycle from a house where two people had recently overdosed on fentanyl. Police said a gun was found at that scene.
On April 5, Kansas City, Kansas, police were involved in a daytime shootout after an undercover drug bust went awry. Three tactical officers and three suspects were wounded by gunfire, and all were expected to survive.
Star reporters Bill Lukitsch, Robert A. Cronkleton and Anna Spoerre contributed.
