On Sunday, October 27, 2024, 30-year-old Melchizedek Judah Mel Fitzgerald was found inside a residence at 2218 South 14th Street in St. Joseph, Missouri, having suffered a fatal gunshot wound. Officers from the St. Joseph Police Department responded shortly before 3:00 p.m.; Fitzgerald, a resident of the home, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two other men, both 20, were critically wounded in the same incident. One, from Johnson County, Kansas, was airlifted to a Kansas City hospital with life-threatening injuries. The other, from Atchison, Kansas, was taken to Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph and listed in critical but stable condition. Police said there was no evidence of additional subjects outside those at the residence; no arrests or public charges had been reported in the days following the shooting as the investigation continued.

Fitzgerald was described as a husband and father of two children, Amiyah and Zion, born in Fort Riley, Kansas, and raised in a military family; he graduated from John Hardin High School in Radcliff, Kentucky. Funeral services were held in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and he was buried at North Hardin Memorial Gardens. If anyone has information about the events at the South 14th Street residence on October 27, please come forward.