2013-09-16

KANSAS CITY — A deadly weekend of violence has neighbors in the urban core hoping that a crime summit at UMKC can come up with new solutions.

A rash of shootings is the latest evidence of the need for a new battle plan to try to stop the bloodshed.

Two separate shootings in Kansas City during the span of three hours killed one person and left four others wounded.

At 53rd and Brooklyn, three people were shot early Sunday morning. All were rushed to the hospital, where one of the victims died.

Blue Hills is the same neighborhood where someone shot and killed a mother and her daughter a couple of weeks ago. They had just moved into a new home near 55th and Wabash. The community recently rallied for information in that case.

Police also say someone in a car shot into a home near 24th and Indiana late Saturday night.

Two people suffered injuries from the gunshots and both were hospitalized.

In all, that’s five victims in the urban core in less than three hours. KCPD community outreach specialist Pat Clarke said new strategies are needed to try to stop the shootings.

“This is not the first time three people have been shot in Kansas City,” Clarke said. “And it’s not the first time that it’s happened this year. The problem is we’re dealing with a whole different breed of murder now. We don’t even know what exactly it is to cause people to do what they do.”

Clarke believes poverty and a lack of education are huge contributing factors to violent urban crime. And although some are quick to blame the proliferation of guns, support for gun control isn’t as strong as you might suspect in crime ravaged neighborhoods.

Clarke said he and many other law-abiding citizens need the right to protect themselves and their property by being able to own and carry firearms.

Violent crime isn’t just an urban core priority. There also was a shooting reported in Independence over the weekend, two shooting deaths in the Northland and a homicide across the state line in Kansas City, Kans.

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