Seventeen-year-old Johan Sarmiento-Peralta was shot after an argument over a shirt while parked near East 10th Street and Van Brunt Boulevard in Kansas City’s Lykins neighborhood on August 4, 2022. Johan had gone to a soccer match with his girlfriend and a family member when four men in a black pickup confronted them, questioned him about a shirt displaying the number 8, and demanded he remove it. After the men left and then returned about ten minutes later in about a dozen people across three vehicles, witnesses say an altercation occurred and an 18-year-old punched Johan. Surveillance and witness accounts indicate Alexis Menjivar handed a black handgun to Kennedy Lopez-Maderos, who then shot Johan in the head. Johan was taken to a hospital and died of his injuries two days later.

Authorities identified Menjivar and Lopez-Maderos as the primary suspects and linked them to MS-13. Both were arrested and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action; Menjivar later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a 25-year sentence. Did anyone in the Lykins area see the pickup or those involved that day who hasn’t spoken with investigators?