4 dead, 5 others injured in shooting at Kansas City bar; manhunt underway
Kansas City KS October 7 2019
Four people were dead, five more wounded and a manhunt was underway Sunday following a shooting rampage at a bar in Kansas City, Kansas, police said.
Police spokesman Thomas Tomasic said police received a call at about 1:30 a.m. local time and arrived at the private club Tequila KC to find patrons fleeing. Inside, officers found the bodies of four Latino men ranging in aged from 20s to 50s, he said.
The five wounded people were found outside, Tomasic said. All were rushed to local hospitals, and none of those injuries were considered life-threatening, he said.
Police were trying to determine how the shooting played out.
“Obviously being a bar at 1:30 stories varied a lot,” Tomasic said. “We are trying to separate out stories, find out the truthful from the maybe exaggerated a little bit.”
He said witnesses indicated that an altercation may have taken place in the bar earlier in the evening. The suspects apparently left the bar, but came back later and started shooting with one or more handguns, Tomasic said.
About 40 people were in the bar when the shooting took place, Tomasic sad. Investigators were reviewing surveillance video from inside the bar. They do not believe the shootings were racially motivated, he said.
Tomasic said the bar, formerly known as the Blue Rose, had been the site of relatively minor bar fights in the past, but nothing near the carnage that took place Sunday morning.
“We do not believe its random. We believe this was an isolated incident,” he said. “We do not believe these suspects are going to go out and do this again.”
Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were responding, the agency said in a tweet.
Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted: “Hate to see an incident like this last night (early AM). My heart goes out to all victims and all touched by last night’s shooting.”
Authorities did not release the identities of the victims, but Juan Ramirez, of Kansas City, Kan., told the Kansas City Star that his 29-year-old nephew was killed and that his family was searching for another relative.
Ramirez said his nephew leaves behind a son, 6, and a daughter, 4.
“We’re just in shock and disbelief,” he said.
