Three people were reported dead, including one teenager, after shootings at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, Kan., and at the nearby Village Shalom assisted-living and retirement facility, both situated about a mile from the Chabad House Center of Kansas City. The scenes of the shootings were in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City and part of its greater metropolitan area.
A grandfather and his 14-year-old grandson were shot in the parking lot of the JCC, and a middle-age woman was shot outside the retirement facility on her way to visit her mother there.
According to local news reports, an older male suspect was taken away in the back of a police car at a nearby elementary school—and yelled an anti-Semitic remark at onlookers.
The children’s school at the JCC was not in session because of the upcoming Passover holiday, which starts at sundown on Monday, April 14. However, as many as 75 people, most of them teens, were inside the theater practicing for a singing competition.
The FBI was on the scene assisting local authorities.
Rabbi Mendy Wineberg, co-director of the local Chabad center, said “the phones started ringing off the hook” shortly after the series of events, which started at about 1 p.m.
He noted that every Shabbat, he walks right by Village Shalom, which was put on lockdown after news of the shootings broke. Weinberg immediately began fielding calls from local residents, and answering questions from worried individuals and families.
“I called up Jewish police officers I know,” he said, noting that two, in particular, frequent the Chabad House. He said he invited one to each Passover seder on Monday and Tuesday nights as reassurance to a rattled community.
“It’s an added benefit,” he said of having them there.
Overland Park, with nearly 175,000 residents, is the second most populous city in the state of Kansas after Wichita.
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