KC teen getting life back on track was killed a month ago. His family wants answers

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A month after the death of 17-year-old Charles Sanders, who was shot in the front yard of a home in Kansas City's Northland, his family has grown frustrated with the police investigation.
They say Kansas City police have told them investigators have a suspect and a warrant for that person's arrest. But still, no one has been taken into custody.
Charles was shot and killed on April 23 in North Brook, a Northland neighborhood. Kansas City police responded to the 7800 block of Northeast 75th Court around 2:15 p.m., according to police spokesperson Capt. Jake Becchina.
Initial information in the investigation indicated an altercation between at least two people led to the shooting, Becchina said.
At the scene, officers discovered a young man, whom they believed at the time could have been a teenager, unresponsive and with gunshot wounds in the front yard of a home. The shooting victim, who police identified as Charles Sanders two days later, was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Since the shooting, his mother, Heather Sanders, said she has had minimal contact with the detectives working the case, and is fed up with what she sees as a lack of action.
'They tell me that they have a suspect and a warrant. But why hasn't an arrest been made yet?' Sanders told The Star.
KCPD police spokesperson Alayna Gonzalez told The Star that detectives 'have made great headway in identifying a possible suspect and the investigation is still very much ongoing.'
The day of Charles' death was a roller coaster of emotions for his family.
A Liberty police officer visited the Sanders home, asking about a burgundy Dodge Ram truck that Charles drove, Heather Sanders said. The truck was found abandoned on the side of the road, according to the officer, and Sanders left work to go pick up the truck with Charles' sister.
Sanders and her daughter, Alyssa, tracked Charles' last known GPS location on his phone.
'We pull up and it's a crime scene,' Sanders said.
At the scene, officers only told them a person was shot and later died, although they asked her if Charles had enemies, among other questions. They wouldn't give Sanders any information about her son's status, she said, which confused her.
After returning home, the family received a call from Liberty Hospital, telling them that they had 10 minutes to come to the hospital to see Charles. On the way there, Sanders received another call saying a detective wouldn't allow them to see her son after all.
The family arrived at the hospital, and Sanders told the detective they would meet investigators there. After anxiously waiting for almost three hours without being able to see Charles, the family went home, feeling certain that Charles had already died, Sanders said.
Authorities didn't officially identify Charles for two days.
'I knew it was him the whole time,' Sanders said. 'He didn't come home. The truck was up there. His location was there. I don't know why they waited.'
Charles was not positively identified at the scene, police spokesperson Sgt. Phil DiMartino told The Star in an email. Since Charles was taken to a hospital and died there, the responsibility of identification is placed on the respective medical examiner's office, DiMartino said.
This responsibility would be on the Clay County Medical Examiner's Office in this case. Detectives waited until the examiner could confirm the victim's identity, DiMartino said.
'Detectives will make every effort to identify a victim on scene,' DiMartino said. 'Investigators understand the sensitive nature and gravity of these situations so they always aim for expedience without sacrificing accuracy.'
Sanders believes her son went to the neighborhood to see friends. But he never returned home. Instead, he was shot and killed in a neighborhood just 3 miles from his Liberty home.
Sanders believes her son was killed for money. She said Charles told his sister, Alyssa, he was taking money out of his bank account, and he withdrew $620.
Two days after his death, the family got the truck back. Charles' wallet was sitting in the front seat with $20 inside, Sanders said.
'He was killed for $600,' she said.
DiMartino would not confirm this detail, saying it's part of the ongoing investigation.
An arrest is what the family is hoping for, but they acknowledge it may not help them cope with losing their eccentric, sociable teen who was preparing for the next phase of his life. Charles was able to connect with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and was a natural leader, loved ones said.
But now, he won't be able to achieve any of the goals he was aiming for just before his death.
'It should have never happened,' Sanders said, tears streaming down her face.
At the time of his death, Charles was turning over a new leaf in life, according to his family.
He had an outgoing personality that attracted many friends, family members said. But after the loss of his father three years ago to heart problems, loved ones said he couldn't control his emotions and began spending time with the wrong crowd.
'Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes, stuff like that,' Charles' oldest sister, Jada, said.
His uncontrollable emotions led to misbehavior at Liberty High School, and Charles was moved to the Department of Youth Services in a residential treatment program to correct his behavior. Liberty Public School District confirmed Charles was a student until last February.
Sanders said her son spent approximately nine months in the program before he came home and graduated in January through the Alternative Resource Center. The program allowed Charles to work through his emotions, Sanders said, including writing down what he was thinking and feeling.
Some notes he read to his family.
'Every time we would go and see him, he would share stuff that he wrote about, like things that happened in his life and how it affected him,' Sanders said. 'A lot of it was for his dad. So it was a lot of therapy kind of stuff with his dad, trying to work through his feelings … to learn how to cope with it.'
After Charles finished the program, he was more driven and focused and avoided hanging with the wrong crowd, loved ones said. He worked at a local Chipotle with his sister, Alyssa, and was pondering whether to go to college to be a child therapist to help other kids or join the military.
'He definitely set himself goals, and he was trying to reach them,' Sanders said.
Family members were happy to see him working toward his goals because he had a light that brought people together, they said. Charles, affectionately known as Chucky, was described as a goofy class clown who never met a stranger. His sisters, with whom he had a strong bond, have memories of him cracking jokes with everyone.
As a kid, Charles played multiple sports like soccer, baseball, and wrestling, and was a Boy Scout. His sister, Jada, recalls a childhood summer when they filled the back of their uncle's truck with water and swam.
Other kids saw his fun qualities as well, and the family has received an outpouring of support since his death.
'When you looked around the funeral, it was like you could almost see the different stages of his life and all the groups of people that he touched,' Sanders' partner, Ross Gardner, said.
A week after Charles' death, racist and antisemitic flyers were seen in Northland neighborhoods off Shoal Creek. The flyers were the talk of the neighborhood where Charles was shot in the days after his death, but authorities haven't said they are connected or that race played a role in the shooting. Parents in North Brook and surrounding neighborhoods responded by posting their own anti-hate flyers and drawing hearts on sidewalks.
Family members didn't see the signs because they avoided the neighborhood altogether, but say they've received support from North Brook residents, who even had a cotton candy fundraiser for the family.
Still, the Sanders family doesn't understand why no arrest has been made.
Authorities told Sanders they have a strong case against the person believed to have killed her son, and a warrant has been issued. But even if an arrest is made soon, it won't help resolve the family's feelings of anger, resentment, and sorrow.
'You're sitting here and you're mad because you want an arrest made, but I'm also telling myself, it's not gonna make me feel any different. I'm still gonna be upset about it,' Sanders said.
Charles' oldest sister fears her brother's killer could be someone she knows.
'Those kids in that neighborhood go to Liberty public schools,' Jada Sanders said. 'What if I know them? What if I went to school with them, or they knew my friends?'
Sanders has been contacting detectives once a week, but said she'll increase that if time continues to pass without an arrest. Until then, the family waits and lives with their memories of Charles, or Chucky, or Darles as other loved ones knew him, knowing life will never be the same again.
'We will all carry on, be successful. Gotta live, gotta make a living,' Gardner said. 'But nothing will ever be normal here again.'