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Kansas City barbecue pitmaster Arthur Lee Sr. was killed in an early morning hit-and-run crash while riding his scooter March 21.
Lee was turning left from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard onto Eastwood Trafficway when a car ran a red light and hit him. A small memorial now grows at the intersection.
"Devastated. Everybody’s hurt, it was really unexpected," his son Arthur Lee Jr. said. "I loved him to death. My dad was like my best friend."
Lee was well known in the barbecue community, working as a pitmaster at Gates Bar-B-Q for the past eight years after spending two decades at Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque.
"He loved working at Gates," Rose Qualls, Lee's sister-in-law, said. "He was always making us slabs and turkey sandwiches."
The morning of the incident, Lee was preparing to move into a new home with his wife and children, getting ready for a fresh start before a tragic end.
"He was really special you know. He was one of a kind and everybody that he was around just loved him," Qualls said. "It’s just a sad situation."
Lee was 60 years old. His family said while his life was cut short, his flame will burn forever.
"My sister, she is really going through it, we all are," Qualls said. "And I’m here for her, whatever she needs, when she need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here."
The family is pleading for answers and for the driver, who fled the scene, to come forward.
"I would pray that they would have some type of compassion, some type of heart, possibly turn themselves in," Lee Jr. said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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