On the morning of December 16, 2020, a tragic sequence of events unfolded at the Canyon Creek Apartments in the southern section of Kansas City, Missouri. 20-year-old female Gabrial Freeman and her brother, Roy Bausby, were outside their residence near 93rd Street and Bales Avenue just before 11:00 a.m. The siblings had encountered a situation involving a vehicle with a flat tire that required towing, which subsequently led to a heated dispute with another individual at the scene.
As the
confrontation escalated, Gabrial attempted to intervene and diffuse the rising tension between her brother and the other party. Despite her efforts to calm the situation, the argument turned violent when the suspect produced a firearm. Witnesses reported hearing a barrage of fifteen to twenty gunshots ring out across the complex. Both Gabrial and Roy were struck by the gunfire as they attempted to retreat toward the safety of the apartment building. First responders arrived to find them unresponsive on the ground, and they were pronounced dead at the scene, marking a devastating double homicide for the local community.
Investigators from the Kansas City Police Department processed the scene and later stated that a physical or verbal altercation had precipitated the shooting. In the weeks following the incident, detectives identified a person of interest in connection with the killings, alleging that the shooter and Roy had engaged in a conflict just before the shots were fired. Despite this development and the execution of a search warrant, public records from early 2021 indicated that no formal charges had immediately been filed against the suspect. The deaths added to a historically high number of violent incidents in the city that year, leaving the siblings' mother, Mary Freeman, to mourn the loss of two children shortly after the death of her eldest son years prior.
