On the morning of July 17, 2022, a verbal altercation on the Kickapoo Reservation in southern Brown County, Kansas, ended in gunfire. William Willie Allen Blacksmith, 35, of Whiting, was found at 1300 Firefly Rd. unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds after the Brown County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a possible shooting about 7:20 a.m. Witnesses said Blacksmith had told another man to leave the area during a dispute; that man then allegedly produced a handgun, shot Blacksmith several times, and fled the scene.

Investigators from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from the Brown County Attorney’s Office and the FBI, identified and located a suspect shortly after the shooting. Stryder Keo, 32, of Horton, was arrested at his home on the reservation and booked into the Brown County Jail in Hiawatha; he was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery and held on $1 million bond.

Are there readers who knew Willie Blacksmith or who were in that area that morning and can share what they saw?