On a summer evening in July 2014, a domestic dispute in Atchison, Kansas, ended with 5-year-old Cadence Harris fatally shot in the head. McGowan then forced Cadence into his vehicle and fled.

An Atchison officer pursued with lights and sirens; the chase crossed into Missouri and back into Kansas and reached reported speeds of 90 miles per hour in a 35-mile-per-hour zone before McGowan crashed his SUV through a barrier on an unfinished road in Leavenworth. McGowan spoke by phone with his mother and grandmother during the chase, and at one point demanded to exchange Cadence for her mother on a bridge, a demand police refused. After the crash, McGowan fired on Leavenworth officers, who wounded him. Officers found Cadence in the front passenger seat with a gunshot wound to the head; she was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy indicated the fatal bullet was fired from inside the vehicle and entered the back of her head.

In May 2016 Marcas McGowan pleaded guilty to kidnapping resulting in death and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence; he admitted to kidnapping Cadence and fatally shooting her as police closed in. Did anyone in the area witness the chase or the vehicle before it crossed into Leavenworth?