For Markella Finley there are more questions than answers about her brother’s murder on Highway 71.
“It's senseless he's not even from here you don't even mess with people from here. I just don't understand,” Finley said.
Kansas City Police first learned about the rush hour shooting through technology.
“The first calls we received in regards to this shooting was a “ShotSpotter” call. After that 911 calls started to come in stating that there was a vehicle that wrecked on the side of the roadway,” Officer Darin Snapp, a KCPD spokesperson said.
Officers shut down the northbound lanes of 71 for several hours Tuesday night as they processed the grim scene at the ramp near 39th street.
“All of our evidence points to a gun battle we don't know how many other people were in the other vehicle we don't know what the other vehicle looks like,” Snapp said.
Family tells 41 Action News the victim is 36-year-old Julius Harris.
“I can't even understand why they would want to do it to him if they knew who he was and wanted something that he had on him all they had to do was ask for it nine out of 10 he would have gave it to them,” Finley said.
Harris is originally from Omaha where he met Suquett Saunders. The two had a daughter together and he raised the little girl’s other two siblings as his own.
“We just both wanted each other to live a happy productive life and he felt like he needed to leave home but didn't want to be too far from his family,” Saunders said.
Harris moved to Kansas City nine years ago.
He worked as a welder at GE before he started restoring cars at a shop he owned in KCK.
He also met Candace Smith, the mother of his six and three year-old children.
“He was a loving man, a lovely man. People don't know what they've done. They took away a very special person,” Smith said. “They took him from his children.”
If you know anything about this fatal shooting call police or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.
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Andres Gutierrez can be reached at andres.gutierrez@kshb.com
