On the evening of December 6, 2022, 22-year-old Shayla Curts was at a residence in the 4900 block of Bellefontaine Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. The young woman, who was thirty-one weeks pregnant with her third child, was sitting on a couch in the living room when the violence occurred. Witnesses in the home reported that a man, later identified as an acquaintance she had known for several years, had been visiting the residence.
Although there were no reports of a significant altercation that night, the man later claimed to investigators that Curts had frequently antagonized him with her words throughout their acquaintance.
As the man, Emmett C. Williams, walked past the couch where Curts was seated, he suddenly drew a 9mm handgun and fired a single shot, striking her in the head. Following the shooting, Williams fled the scene, running north on Bellefontaine Avenue. Inside the home, witnesses who heard the gunshot discovered Curts unresponsive and contacted authorities. Officers arrived to find her deceased from the wound; her unborn child, whom she planned to name Soleil, also did not survive the attack. A shell casing was recovered near the couch, and police began their search for the shooter.
Hours later, around 4:15 a.m. the following morning, Williams called 911 from a location on Blue Parkway to confess that he had shot someone and wished to surrender. He led detectives to a wooded area where he had discarded the firearm used in the killing. Williams was arrested and subsequently charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action. In June 2024, he pleaded guilty to the charges. A Jackson County judge later sentenced him to a total of 40 years in prison, ordering 25 years for the murder convictions and 15 years for the armed criminal action charges to run consecutively.
