De’Anthoni Lee Sanders was a 20-year-old man from Kansas City, Missouri. On the evening of Friday, October 14, 2016, the city’s east side was settling into night when a call for help pulled police toward the area of 21st Street and Askew Avenue. Officers arrived to find Sanders badly injured, suffering from multiple stab wounds, out in the open near the street.
What witnesses could offer was brief but haunting: people in the neighborhood told police they’d heard two men arguing just before the violence erupted. The argument ended with Sanders stabbed, and by the time officers reached him, the urgency was medical as much as it was investigative. Paramedics rushed him to a hospital in critical condition, but the wounds were too severe; he died a few hours later.
In the immediate aftermath, authorities said the investigation was ongoing and they worked to piece together what happened in those moments before the stabbing. Reports at the time noted that no arrests had been made, and no suspect name was publicly announced in the coverage describing the argument and the attack. The case, as it was presented then, was a search for the person who walked away while Sanders was left behind.
As his family prepared to bury him, remembrances filled in the parts the police reports couldn’t: Sanders was known as “Dee” or “Ant,” and he had been educated in the Hickman Mills School District. Services were planned for late October, with burial at Twelve Gates Memorial Gardens in Kansas City.
