Why did they have to kill him?
For God’s sake, why did they have to kill him?
He and a companion had handed over their cell phones and wallets Sunday night, and one of the robbers shot him anyway.
I am both angry and heartsick about the senseless death of 24-year-old Zach Pearce, who was accosted while walking to his apartment at 40th and Walnut after a night in Westport.
Zach Pearce
Zach and his friend were within several yards of his building when they were accosted by three occupants of a maroon SUV. A woman was driving. One of the robbers got out of the vehicle and, after the victims had handed over their possessions, the robber who was outside the vehicle shot Pearce. Bang! Down he went…and died on the street.
He had his life ahead of him. I’m guessing he had moved into the city, and out of Blue Springs, to be closer to the urban “action.” But in the blink of an eye, on Kansas City’s mean streets, his parents, Joe and Cora Pearce of Blue Springs, lost a son. He had an older brother. He had a lot of close friends, many of whom attended a candlelight vigil Monday night outside his apartment building, where friends have left candles and flowers in a makeshift memorial.
Attached to a dozen yellow roses in the memorial is a handwritten note from women named Ashley and Hannah. It says: “Zach — I hope these serve as a little reminder of the bright beautiful person that you were. We love you & always will.”
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The heart of a big city has a special allure for many young people. When I moved here in 1969 from Louisville, I wanted to be in the city. I remember looking at an apartment way out south, somewhere in the Red Bridge area, and thinking, “No way.” I ended up renting a sparsely furnished apartment at Armour and Cherry and being thrilled to be close to The Star and close to singles bars like the Red Apple and Sneaky Pete’s (both long gone) on Broadway.
I never walked to those bars, but scores of times I parked my car on Armour or a side street late at night and made the short walk to my apartment. I was never particularly worried about my safety, but I knew I was vulnerable. Sometimes I was drunk. I would have been an easy target. But I was lucky…
After several months, I moved into a house in Brookside with four other guys. We split the $250-a-month rent five ways. And it was a much safer area. By then I was going to Westport regularly, and I never had a problem. I do remember one night when I was with Patty, probably in the mid-’80s, crossing paths with a couple of men in the Westport Bank parking lot and being very relieved when we were well past them. One of those guys, his eyes…mean, threatening, narrowly focused.
Just as the city called to me, it called to Zach Pearce. Joe Pearce, his father, told a KSHB reporter: “My wife was repeatedly…riding him to move out of the city. She was begging for him to move out of the city, and he would say that he felt safe there and it would be fine if anyone wanted to rob him, he would cooperate fully so he would be fine.”
He should have been fine. He should have been able to feel safe in the city. But American society is fucked up, has been for a long time, and very few of us are safe. Maybe if you’re in Loch Lloyd or Hallbrook and you never leave home…but I don’t know.
Zach Pearce’s apartment building on 40th Street, a block east of Main
I believe the perpetrators will get caught in fairly short order. They may well run their mouths. Maybe the plan was never to fire the weapon, and one of the two who did not shoot will come forward in order to save his or her own skin. If just one of the two comes forward, I would bet on the woman. She, particularly, must be scared to death. Maybe she has told, or will tell, her mother.
It’s just a crying shame, heartbreaking, that Zach will never be able to talk to his mother or father again. And that they will never be able to talk to him again, to hold him, to tell him they love him. God, it’s awful.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Too many stories like this. I remember a story of a nineteen-year-old, came to KCK from a rural area, got hired to clerk at a convenience store, killed on his first night on the job. About the only person who knew him was his new landord — and his bereft family back home.
Just a shame. I heard on the radio this morning that they have 3 suspects — 2 males and a female. Hopefully they are caught soon. I have been living in the West Plaza area for three years and up until this past summer would walk to and from Westport all of the time. I’ve been lucky not to have anything happen to me but read stories weekly in my neighborhood watch group of people getting robbed and decided it’s probably safer to avoid the area after the sun goes down. I’m not sure what all the KCPD can do, as I know they have limited resources. But I can tell you that you would be very hard pressed to ever find patrol cars around the area, which could potentially reduce crime. My heart goes out to Zach’s family.
Like you, Patrick, I’m starting to think we need a lot more uniformed officers patrolling the streets — patrolling the streets and also on traffic patrol. The Kansas City area has grown appreciably, and that means there are more crooks and more bad drivers on streets and highways that are more crowded than ever.
Police presence is the best deterrent there is, and I think city officials ought to start directing a bigger portion of revenue to law enforcement. You can’t stop crime and speeding and reckless driving altogether, of course, but if you recognize both as chronic problems and go after them aggressively, you can reduce it significantly. This is an extremely dangerous metro area.
I could be completely wrong-but I think I remember reading a while ago that Kansas City was unique in the fact that the Police Department doesn’t report to the Mayor/City Council? If that’s the case who does oversee it and how much funding goes toward it?
It’s technically a state agency, overseen by a five-member board of commissioners, all but one of whom — the mayor — are appointed by the governor. But the city pays the bills. It’s unusual, and it dates back to the Pendergast days, when corruption abounded and the state took control of the police department. It’s an anachronism and the system should be changed, but the General Assembly is loathe to relinquish any power it already has. Similarly, the people who are named to the police board enjoy feeling important and don’t want to see the system changed.
St. Louis had a similar system until several years ago, when city and state leaders reached some kind of a deal — don’t know exactly what the state got in return — to return the police department to city control.
That is interesting. Well, now that he’s pushed KCI through, it would be great if Mr. James could help make a point to put more officers on the street during his last year in office. Definitely think that should be a main goal of whoever succeeds him as well.
We are paying the price for paying those who can’t even care for themselves to raise the next generation. Now we see the results of the feral children produced by that system. We have told people that they are entitled to all of the good things of life without any moral attachments whatsoever to try and give back to society. They have no conscience and think nothing of the damage and grief they cause others.
Just this evening Fox 4 had a story about a guy who is moving from the River Market area after losing two motorcycles and a pickup. The cops have done nothing to correct crime in the area and Jean Peters Baker is notoriously weak on crime.
Until we have the will to change the system that creates these monsters it will only get worse.
You’re right about something needing to be done at the most basic level of society; a cop on every corner isn’t going to address the problem of kids giving birth to kids and then basically letting the kids fend for themselves. There’s definitely a lack of responsible child rearing. It’s so entrenched now, I don’t know what steps should be taken to try to start turning it around…It’s not just a problem among the poor, either. David Jungerman’s sense of personal responsibility is just as lacking as that of the punks who killed Zach Pearce.
Jimmy, use your observations from the classroom and in the power structure of the schools to answer your own questions. The messages we send to our young people are coded in the reader comments. “A few of you are good, smart, and worthy (because why?…test scores, passivity, etc), while the rest of you are losers and never going to amount to anything…(calling kids ‘feral’ is exactly what our leadership does in our “school dialogues, ” and kids hear it and absorb it.) Until we set up an educational system that can reach deeper than the upper 10%, until we eleminate the ‘winner/loser” aspect of education, we will continue to produce “haves and have nots,” which in turn will result in production of a segment of the population with nothing to lose.