A 27-year-old Kansas City man faces multiple charges including first-degree murder in a gas station shooting that left a man dead and his ten-year-old son paralyzed.
At a Thursday news conference, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker was visibly moved by the police work that led to the arrest of Dontae Jefferson.
"I asked you for heroes to step up and step forward and help solve this case ... help us bring this family justicen... and that happened," the prosecutor said.
Two of the heroes Peters Baker cited were police detectives Alana Boothe and Robert Guffey, who bought the critically injured 10-year-old a book on Presidents of the United States he had asked for, and then, she said, went out and solved the case.
Unnamed private citizens identified Jefferson in surveillance video from the scene. Jefferson faces five felony charges in addition to murder. They include endangerment of another child who was in the vehicle in which the victims were shot and being a felon unlawfully in possession of a firearm.
Ten year old Ka'Vyea Tyson remains hospitalized at Children's Mercy Hospital and on a respirator. His aunt, Ky Martin, said the boy's lung infection appears to be responding to antibiotics, and though doctors hope he may walk again he remains paralyzed from the chest down.