Home for me, for those of you who don’t know, is Kansas City, Missouri. I grew up in Independence (home of President Harry Truman) and lived and worked in Kansas City until two years ago when my wife and I move to the fiery furnaces of Dallas, Texas.Yesterday afternoon, I popped onto FoxNews.com and was hit with an image I recognized – an overhead shot of the Ward Parkway mall in south Kansas City – accompanied by a headline I couldn’t believe: Two Gunned Down at Kansas City Mall.
Now, I’m not so sheltered as to have thought something like this could never have happened in Kansas City. It’s a big town, maybe not by East Coast or Texas standards, but it’s not exactly a sleepy little hamlet. We even had our own serial killer, for goodness sake.
The thing that’s odd is that my wife and I lived near that mall for the first year and half of our marriage. We often went to the Target that anchored the building’s north side. We drove by it every week on our way to church. Now to see familiar sites cordoned off with police tape, well, it’s eerie. And if we were still living in the area, there’s a decent chance we would’ve been at that Target yesterday afternoon.
Which is exactly where a childhood friend and his infant son were when the shots rang out. After initially ducking behind a display, he decided it was best get his son out of the Target. Which he did. But not until after several store employees told him they couldn’t go out the fire exit because it would set off the alarm. I’m not kidding. But, not being one to fear the Red Vest of Value, he found a door on his own, escaped and got his son home safely.
Which seems to be no small feat these days.
For more on the story, click here.
Later,
Fox
Photo ©2007 Kansas City Star/Fred Blocher