On the evening of Friday, December 11, 2009, police in Kansas City, Missouri, were dispatched to a residential neighborhood following reports of gunfire. At approximately 5:01 p.m., officers arrived at the intersection of 68th Terrace and Myrtle, where they discovered a blue Toyota parked at the scene. Inside the vehicle, they found 19-year-old male Rakim Gonzales unresponsive in the driver's seat.
He had sustained apparent gunshot wounds that proved fatal, and investigators noted that he was holding a handgun at the time he was discovered.
Witness accounts provided to law enforcement at the scene suggested a chaotic exchange of gunfire involving multiple parties. Onlookers reported seeing two other vehicles fleeing the area immediately after the shooting, with the occupants of those cars allegedly firing weapons at one another as they sped away. The violent encounter left Gonzales dead at the scene, while the other individuals involved managed to escape before authorities could intervene.
At the time of the initial investigation, detectives had not taken any suspects into custody. Police appealed to the public for information, asking anyone with knowledge of the incident to contact the TIPS Hotline, but no immediate arrests were reported in connection with the homicide. The circumstances surrounding the shootout and the identities of the individuals in the fleeing vehicles remained the subject of an ongoing inquiry.
