Welcome to Arrest Stories. A twenty-seven-year-old Kansas City man has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder after a deadly nightclub shooting that killed two women. Here's what may have happened.
On February fifteenth, Kansas City police responded to Status Nightclub on Southwest Boulevard in the early morning hours after reports of gunfire. Two women, twenty-four-year-old Tishauna Ballard and twenty-nine-year-old Eboni Silas, were shot and killed during the incident.
Surveillance video from inside the crowded nightclub captured the events leading up to the shooting. The footage shows Dontae M. Brooks entering Status KC around one fifty-one a.m. while wearing a distinctive red baseball cap with a capital A on the front. At approximately two oh four a.m., an unknown man was captured on video whispering to Brooks shortly before he opened fire on another man dancing nearby.
As people scattered from the gunfire, Brooks attempted to flee but fell during his escape, knocking the baseball cap he was wearing to the ground. Investigators found five shell casings at the scene and used DNA evidence from the fallen cap, along with screenshots from the surveillance video, to identify Brooks as the suspect.
Brooks, who was born April fifteenth nineteen ninety-eight, was under federal supervision at the time of the shooting and was prohibited from possessing firearms when the attack occurred.
On February seventeenth, Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson announced the murder charges against Brooks. His bond has been set at two hundred thousand dollars cash only.
Johnson stated, "Every person who walks into a nightclub, restaurant, concert, anywhere, deserves to make it home safely. Because of the alleged senseless and reckless decisions of one individual, two women did not make it home to their families Sunday morning."
Tishauna Ballard was described as someone who loved to travel, while family members remembered both victims as loving and caring individuals.
All suspects presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Do not take this report as factual, always verify facts. Thanks for watching Arrest Stories.