Kansas City family traumatized after Mother’s Day shooting injures juvenile, damages home

A Kansas City family has been uprooted from their home after a shooting in the early hours of Mother’s Day, which damaged both their home and their sense of safety.

Synee Brown and her family of nine have no idea why anyone would want to harm them, Brown said in a GoFundMe created for the family.

“I don’t know who they are, we don’t have any enemies or anything, you know, a peaceful people,” Brown said in an interview with The Star. “We go to work, we don’t dabble in the streets or anything like that, like we stick to ourselves.”

Shortly after 1 a.m. that morning Brown said she awoke to what she said sounded like her kids knocking on her door. But, after hearing “piercing screams” from outside her room, Brown and her boyfriend jumped into action.

As a bullet flew past her boyfriend’s head, Brown grabbed her one-year-old baby from her crib and ran.

Brown’s 14-year-old stepdaughter was shot in her buttocks.

“She’s screaming she doesn’t want to die,” Brown said. “Like, ‘save her, save her.’”

‘The scars are there’

Brown’s daughter is recovering well, and was able to return to school, she said. No one else was injured in the shooting, but the family was left traumatized.

“Every car that drives by we’re all looking, and, you know, every time you hear a loud noise everybody’s running like ‘what is that, what is that?’” Brown said. “And other than that, I think that, you know, for kids, I’m really proud of them. They’re doing really well. But, of course, the scars are there.”

Brown’s children were nervous to return to school after the shooting, worried that they would have to return to the house, or that friends and neighbors would ask questions about the shooting, Brown said.

“My son had said he was nervous all day,” Brown said. “He was paranoid, but he was downstairs when the shooting started, and when he ran up the stairs they were like shooting up, so he thought they were shooting for him, like at him, and he’s only 10, so, he’s pretty traumatized behind it.”

The shooting left the Browns’ home unlivable, according to her GoFundMe post. The only room left untouched by bullets was the sunroom, Brown said.

Brown’s stepdaughter’s bedroom, which she was in at the time of the shooting, took the brunt of the damage.

“The windows are shot up and she said she was up moving around so I’m thinking that’s why she got the most,” Brown said.

Brown’s room, which was next door to her stepdaughter’s, sustained damage to the windows, as well as bullet holes in her baby’s crib and near where her husband sat up in bed when he initially heard the gunfire.

“There was a bullet that like, flew past his face that I had seen when I first woke up and there’s a hole right there,” Brown said.

Brown was unable to work for a week after the shooting, as she works from home.

‘I can’t sleep still’

The family was recently able to secure new housing, according to the GoFundMe, and have only returned to the home to get clothing for the kids, Brown said.

Brown said the family has struggled to feel supported in the aftermath of the shooting, but have received a lot of support from family. Brown’s brother came to Kansas City from Atlanta to help, booking them a hotel room for a few days. Her boyfriend’s mother helped the family find a new home.

“Other than her and him, that’s pretty much where our support has been,” Brown said.

According to the GoFundMe, KCPD told the family they believed the attack was targeted “due to previous activity in the home” prior to the family’s arrival.

KCPD did not confirm a motive for the attack, but said in an email to The Star that shots were fired from two separate vehicles.

Since the Mother’s Day shooting, the family has been trying to “fake it until they make it,” Brown said.

“I can see, you know, sometimes my kids staring off and they’re like, they’re thinking about it,” Brown said. “I can’t sleep still.”

Detectives are still investigating the incident. Anyone with information can submit an anonymous tip to Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers at 816-474-TIPS or 816-474-8477.