On the night of May 3, 2015, 46-year-old Josette Beeks, a Black woman, was fatally shot near Ninth Street and Indiana Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. She was sitting on a porch with a group of people after recently moving back to Kansas City from Omaha, and witnesses reported multiple gunshots and seeing a man running from the scene. Beeks tried to flee and was struck in the back.

Police arrested 34-year-old Antwan L. Fayne of Kansas City and charged him with first-degree murder, with prosecutors alleging he was the gunman and that the shooting stemmed from a prior altercation with someone in Beeks’s group, making Beeks an unintended victim. At trial the defense challenged the prosecution’s physical-evidence account, and after nearly two hours of deliberation the jury acquitted Fayne. The family described Beeks as a sweet, giving grandmother of seven and one of twelve children, who was left devastated by her sudden death.

The killing remains unsolved following the acquittal. If anyone knew Josette or has information about that night near Ninth Street and Indiana Avenue, please come forward.