KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Police are investigating Kansas City’s latest shooting death as debate roils over a massive federal operation that has sent 225 additional federal agents from four different agencies into the city to combat violent crime.
The shooting happened just before 7 p.m. Wednesday in a residential area in southeastern Kansas City, police said in a news release. Officers called to the scene found Lodiller Styles, 35, with gunshot wounds in the middle of the street. He died at the scene, police said. Witnesses told police a pickup truck had sped from the scene.
A pickup matching that description was later found abandoned and wrecked a short distance away and appeared to have hit other vehicles, police said. No arrests had been made by midmorning Thursday, but police were searching for a suspect.
The death was the city’s 111th homicide this year, compared with 80 homicides for the same period last year, according to data compiled by the Kansas City Star.
The federal law enforcement effort - dubbed Operation Legend after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while sleeping in his bed in Kansas City - is intended to investigate violent crime in cooperation with local law enforcement.
Critics and civil rights organizations opposed to the effort have said local officials should handle local crimes and that the increased presence of federal agents could be met with growing distrust by minority residents.
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