On the early morning of October 10, 2015, a violent confrontation unfolded on the sidewalk outside a BP gas station in the 4800 block of Independence Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. Police officers patrolling the area heard the sound of gunfire just after midnight and rushed to the scene. Upon arrival near the intersection with Van Brunt Boulevard, first responders discovered two victims suffering from gunshot wounds. One of the individuals was Jorge L.
Calderon-Ruiz, a 21-year-old Hispanic male, who was found deceased at the scene alongside 18-year-old Pablo Samyr Lopez.
Homicide detectives quickly gathered evidence from the convenience store's surveillance system, which provided a chilling account of the double murder. The video footage captured an argument between the victims and a suspect that escalated rapidly into lethal violence. The recording showed the shooter firing multiple rounds at Calderon-Ruiz and Lopez, continuing to shoot even after both men had fallen to the ground and were incapacitated. Following the attack, the gunman fled the scene in a 2004 Chevy Impala driven by an accomplice. The getaway vehicle was later discovered in Kansas City, Kansas, where it had been set on fire in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence.
In December 2015, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office announced charges against two teenagers in connection with the killings. Louie S. Guana, who was 18 at the time, was identified as the alleged shooter and charged with two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of armed criminal action, and first-degree assault. His alleged accomplice, 17-year-old Christopher Hamm Jr., was charged with hindering prosecution of a felony and tampering with physical evidence for his role in driving the getaway car and the subsequent destruction of the vehicle.
At the time the charges were filed, both suspects remained at large, prompting a manhunt by local authorities who urged the public to provide information on their whereabouts. While Guana was the primary focus of the murder charges, legal trouble continued to follow Hamm in the years after the incident. In June 2017, Hamm was taken into custody following a high-speed pursuit in Platte County, Missouri, during which he and another individual allegedly threw methamphetamine and firearms from a vehicle before being apprehended by a multi-agency task force. At the time of this later arrest, Hamm was held in the Jackson County Detention Center, facing new felonies in addition to his previous connection to the 2015 case.
