KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Danielle Benson is eternally grateful her life was spared on Thanksgiving, after the minivan she was in got caught in the crossfire of a late-night shooting outside the Troost Market.
"I was praying that I don't get shot," Benson said Tuesday. "I couldn't even get down there because my seat was too far up."
Benson's son and brother were still inside the convenience store when the gunfire stopped. It would eventually cost a man his life and this mother of eight children lost her own way of getting around.
"We got to get to the store and during this Corona[virus pandemic], we can't ask people for rides," Benson said. "We have to literally pay out of pocket to ask people to take us to the store."
But that might soon change.
"She was in the wrong place; wrong time," Jean Peters Baker, Jackson County, Missouri, prosecutor, said.
Peters Baker's office is working to raise money to replace Benson's minivan through a GoFundMe campaign.
"While we can replace doors and windows, we can replace tires, sometimes — we cannot replace vehicles," Baker said, referring to the Caring for Crime Survivors program created in 2018. "So that’s why we’re asking for others to help us, even in small amounts, to help us get there."
Other members of the community also are stepping up.
A KCPD spokesperson told 41 Action News they have identified a person of interest in this case. As detectives search for the suspected killer, the department’s social workers are helping Benson's family.
"I know a lot of people say stuff about the police, but just seeing how they helped me in this situation – I know all of them [are] not bad," Benson said.
The prosecutor's office, with the help of community members, launched the GoFundMe campaign Wednesday afternoon.
