The Last Dance

Kristi Carroll worked Friday and Saturday nights at Mad Jack's on 79th Street and Troost, so she didn't have many opportunities to go out and live it up with her friends. She was saving money for college. Her dad had promised to match every dollar she socked away so she could be the first in their family to earn a degree.

But even college-bound girls need to have fun every now and then. It was her girlfriend's birthday, and she wanted to spend a Saturday evening celebrating.

She and her brother Chavis made plans to meet up with their friends at a bowling alley near 85th Street and the Blue Ridge Cutoff on November 23, 2002. But when they got there, the place was full of league bowlers. There were hardly any teens.

One of their fiends mentioned having seen a flyer for a party at the Troostwood Banquet Hall -- "no player haters, no wallhuggers," it read. They decided the action would be better over there.

Chavis headed straight for the party with a friend, but Kristi had a friend drive her to her grandmother's house on the way to pick up a few things her mother had asked for.

When Chavis got to the banquet hall, the place was already packed. For lack of an underage nightclub, Kansas City's teen social scene depends largely on amateur promoters who rent facilities and charge nominal door fees. Troostwood had become something of a hot spot for teens. Though usually rented for family events such as wedding receptions, reunions and graduation celebrations, its wide dance floor and cheap rental rates made it attractive for people who wanted to throw parties.

Chavis paid his five dollars. The man who collected his money at the door waved a metal-detecting wand across Chavis' body, but it didn't go off when it passed over the keys and cell phone in his pockets. He pushed through the crowd and looked for people he knew.

Almost as soon as he got there, a fight broke out. The party's DJ rushed over, broke it up and pushed the combatants out the door. Other than the man with the metal detector, Chavis saw no security guards.

Just after Kristi showed up a few minutes later, another fight broke out, this one between two girls. The crowd pushed forward to watch the scuffle.

The pushing escalated. Chavis saw kids throwing gang signs. He started thinking that maybe the party hadn't been such a good idea after all.

He made his way across the room to talk to his sister. When he got to her, she agreed it was time to leave but said she wanted to say good-bye to her birthday friend first. She waded back through the crowd.

The tension in the banquet hall thickened. The place was packed wall to wall with teens jostling against one another. Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz boomed from the sound system: In the club, motherfucker, go bad, go hard! Chavis saw more gang signs flash around. His feeling that it was time to leave grew more urgent. He caught up with his sister, grabbed her hand and started leading her to the door.

Among those making gang signs was 19-year-old Yntell Duley, police reports allege. According to a police report, Duley and an associate tangled with other gang members in an altercation. "Fuck them niggers, it's still going down," Duley yelled, according to police transcriptions of witness testimony. "Them niggers is bitches. I'll pop the niggers, it's whatever, cuz. Nigger, you know, my strap [gun] holds more."

Then Duley allegedly raised a pistol and fired several rounds.

In his left hand, Chavis felt a dead weight.

He ducked down and pushed toward the door.

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw his sister on the floor. He figured she had simply dropped to the floor to dodge the bullets.

Then someone said, "Your sister's been shot."

He thought she'd just been hit in the arm when he got back to her. She was still breathing. But when he looked more closely, he saw blood around her head. He pulled her shirt up to try to stop the bleeding.

He panicked. He thought, Let's get her out of here.

He carried her to a friend's car, hoisted her in the back seat and climbed in. A friend whisked them to Research Hospital at 63rd Street and Prospect.

"Everything will be OK," he kept telling her. She gasped for air and shook her head.

Kristi was Chavis' best friend. The two were born just ten months apart. They went to the same schools and did almost everything together. She woke him up every morning to go to school. If he couldn't afford new shoes, she'd buy them for him. He hung out with her when she wrote poetry, both of them thinking aloud about how best to express her feelings. He couldn't imagine losing her.

At the hospital, the nurses rushed her away on a gurney. Chavis called his parents.

When Ronnie Carroll got there, the doctor told him Kristi had been shot in the head and her chances were not good.