Thomas Orr, 30, was killed on August 20, 2017, while attending a crowded day party at Californos restaurant in Kansas City’s Westport neighborhood. A Black man recently assigned as a middle school resource officer, he had begun that role just days earlier and was at the party off duty, taking photographs and socializing. A dispute that did not involve Orr escalated into gunfire; Orr was struck and killed, and a woman was wounded and expected to recover. More than 200 people were at the event, and investigators initially received very few witness statements.

Eyewitnesses and social media images identified 22-year-old Sean D. Steward as the person who fired into the crowd. Steward reportedly began shooting after an altercation on the dance floor and fled in a dark-colored Dodge Charger. He was arrested about a month later, and a large cache of weapons and ammunition was seized at the location of his arrest. After trial proceedings began in October 2018, Steward pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and related charges and received an 18-year prison sentence. Orr’s family and the Lee’s Summit Police Department publicly mourned his death; his mother offered forgiveness to the man convicted of killing her son.

Did anyone who attended the party or lived nearby notice anything unusual before the shooting that night?