Editor's note: this story was updated at midday Tuesday with more charges filed and other details.
Prosecutors charged a 26-year-old Kansas City man with three counts of murder in connection with a mass shooting Sunday morning at an illegal after-hours club that left three people dead and six others injured.
Keivon M. Greene faces two counts of second-degree murder, and a third count of second-degree felony murder, as well as three counts of armed criminal action, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in updating the charges Tuesday.
Greene was at the club — which operates as an auto repair shop during the week — at the intersection of 57th Street and Prospect Avenue when the shooting occurred at about 4:30 a.m. He is currently in police custody in an area hospital.
Baker said the shooting is still under investigation and Greene is considered just one of two suspects. But her office charged Greene with all the events that took place that morning, she said.
"Whether or not he fired the fatal shot or not, he is the individual that set off this chain event that lead to shooting by others," Baker said. "So, under Missouri law, he, too, is to be held accountable for all the results of that evening."
According to charging documents released Monday, one of the victims told detectives she watched Greene and another individual shoot the other victims after a brief exchange. Officers discovered two men and one woman dead in a parking lot near the intersection around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 25.
Kansas City Police say five others were transported to area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot injuries. A sixth victim with gunshot injuries was discovered Monday.
KCPD identified the three victims who died as Nikko Manning, 22, Camden Brown, 27, and Jasisty “Jas” Strong, 28.
Greene was being held at the Jackson County Detention Center for drug charges and resisting arrest by Independence Police. He posted $1,000 bond and left the dentention center just two days before the shooting.
Speaking before the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners Tuesday, Chief Stacey Graves said she was at the scene on Sunday morning and talked to a victim's mother who still had blood on her feet, hands and cheek because she had tried to give aid to her adult child.
"She's a wife and a mother and that's just like me," Graves said.
Graves said the city has an "alarming number" of homicides, totaling 97 for the year on Tuesday. At this time last year, it was 73 — and the five-year average is 71, said Deputy Chief Luis Ortiz.
"I'd say we have a culture of violence where it's expected and accepted," Graves said. "I don't want to get desensitized to all of this violence."
Graves said everyone in Kansas City should be paying attention to the problem because it won't be solved without everyone.
In an unprecedented move, Graves also apologized for the length of time one of the victim's bodies lay in the street as the police crime scene technicians did their work. The high-tech, 360-degree scans of the crime scene take hours and it was a chaotic scene, she said.
"I do understand that there was a victim that was out on the street for what we felt like was too long and I'm sorry for that," she said.
