Jogger’s unexplained slaying stuns Missouri city
Harry Stone, 60, was fatally shot Sunday morning while jogging in Raytown, Missouri.
May 18th, 2012
07:39 PM ET

Jogger’s unexplained slaying stuns Missouri city

Harry Stone was on one of his usual jogs in a Kansas City suburb shortly before 7:30 a.m. Sunday when an approaching car slowed down and a passenger shot him.

The vehicle kept going without stopping, and Stone, 60, later died at a hospital.

Nearly a week later, police in Raytown, Missouri, say they have no suspects, and no one has any idea why he was targeted.

He wasn’t robbed. He didn’t have any known enemies. And a gang-initiation hit appears implausible, Raytown police Capt. Ted Bowman said.

“Even grasping at straws and imagining motives, we have been able to find nothing in the man’s background or time or place or associations or his relationships or his history,” Bowman said Thursday.

“Literally, we can find no motive,” he said.

Stone was a homeowners’ association leader and the husband of a pastoral assistant – she was supposed to preach Sunday morning at Raytown’s St. Luke United Methodist Church, CNN affiliate WDAF reported.

He was shot near an intersection by a gas station. Surveillance video from the station shows the shooting, though police have released only footage of a few seconds before the shot, Bowman said.

The video shows a dark-color, four-door car. Police say they don’t know the model or the license plate number. Bowman said a witness was able to describe only the passenger, and the description was light on details: a young African American male with a short Afro-type hairstyle.

A Kansas City police spokesman, representing a multiagency detective squad that looked into the shooting, initially told local media that the killing could have been part of a gang initiation, as CNN affiliate KCTV reported.

But Bowman said Thursday that detectives have determined this probably wasn’t the case.

“We have not found any of the street gangs, that we’re aware of, to make that an open part of the initiation process,” he said.

People who knew Stone told KCTV that he enjoyed serving others, doing things such as helping to build a park next to his church. His daughter, Susan Li, told reporters Monday that he prided himself in keeping physically fit and hoped to get back into running marathons.

Li asked for people with information about the shooting to come forward.

“He was in constant service … to the community, and the community now has the opportunity to be in the service of justice,” she said.

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Filed under: Crime • Missouri
soundoff (409 Responses)
  1. bob ho

    Racism is CNN refusing to call the hate crime of killing a white person a hate crime,

    May 21, 2012 at 1:25 pm | Report abuse |
  2. Insulted Relative

    Samuel, I pray for you and hope your terrilble comment is not a reflection on what kind of person you are.

    May 21, 2012 at 1:50 pm | Report abuse |
  3. Gary Brandner

    Allow me to clear up the police puzzlement about the motive here. The shooter was black, the victim was white.

    May 21, 2012 at 1:53 pm | Report abuse |
  4. rev clifford klutz

    Perhaps the police should figure out which street gangs have secret requirements to randomly kill people. And, perhaps the police should check beyond their own city limits, maybe search into other states. A friend of mine was shot a few years ago in an apparent gang initation. He was driving home from a musical performance at about three in the morning on an interstate highway; a car pulled up beside him and the passenger opened fire. My friend survived with bullet wounds to tell the story, but the gunman was never apprehended.

    May 21, 2012 at 1:53 pm | Report abuse |
  5. propaganda101

    So how many more innocent people are going to be hurt by race violence until it becomes mainstream news??? Can't be used as a political weapon so probably never I guess. All this hate against the evil white people incited by black leaders over that stupid Zimmerman case. Maybe that would be a good news story? Can anyone else see the big picture here?

    May 21, 2012 at 2:00 pm | Report abuse |
  6. Orolo

    RTB: Since Jesus was conceived by an undefined and incomprehensible process involving a human and "divine intervention", I doubt that conventional ideation about human phenomics and morphology applies.

    May 21, 2012 at 2:14 pm | Report abuse |
    • LC B

      Oh my – fifty cent words? to the general public, do little to inform readers – regarding the point you seek to make and impart! And, the Jesus 'conceived' comment? where's the proof that this (mythical?) individual even ever existed?

      May 21, 2012 at 6:44 pm | Report abuse |
  7. john

    I don't even know the race of the victim, but if you follow what is happening in society today, then the conclusion is obvious.
    If the victim was white, then the shooter(s) were black. If the victim was black, then the shooter(s) were also black.
    In the first example, it was revenge for trayvon martin and in the 2nd instance, it was a drug deal gone bad.
    Just saying.

    May 21, 2012 at 2:37 pm | Report abuse |
  8. Jack Herman

    My question is, at what point is Obama going to say, "If my grandfather was alive, he'd look like this man."? Oh right, black on white crime doesn't matter.

    May 21, 2012 at 2:49 pm | Report abuse |
  9. Dee

    A car slowing down...a man of stature...a wife not preaching that day when she would of...a hired gun....Do the math people!!!!

    May 21, 2012 at 4:08 pm | Report abuse |
    • Carlos

      Thanks for thinking like a detectve, apparently most of the posters here have a one track mind that cannot think beyond "racially motivated crime".

      May 21, 2012 at 6:04 pm | Report abuse |
  10. EFPaisley

    At least these criminals didn't yell "Now that's justice for Trayvon" like the last half-dozen did. Maybe they just wised-up, forgot or no one who heard it was willing to come forward this time......

    May 21, 2012 at 4:16 pm | Report abuse |
  11. I stopped running.

    I quit running, biking, and going to the health club. I quit running because a guy kept throwing water bottles at me. They were always full. He could throw really hard. I thought he would take out my knees if he ever hit me. I have no idea who that was or why. He never stops, just drives by and hurls a water bottle at me. Scares me half to death. Then I met a control freak in the health club. just have to stay away from those. And I got sprayed with bear spray on the bike trail by a guy that wouldn't hold his loose dog so I could pass. People are just bad. and they hate people that try to be healthy. They don't know that we are dealing with severe health issues. they just have some weird problem.

    May 22, 2012 at 12:29 am | Report abuse |
    • I stopped running.

      I've been bit before so i learned to be proactive about dogs, but their owners aren't very smart is what you learn in that exercise.

      May 22, 2012 at 12:31 am | Report abuse |
  12. Kayla

    Dr David Kenneth Cochrane and Dr Brian Neil Talarico, have and continue to cause inreversible life threatening harm to Woman, Children, and the Vulnerable... They're both paid by governments to Kill people for Profit... Please Participate in bringing these two to jusice in any way you see fit... They both work at the New Hospital and Clinics in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.

    Kayla, Supervisor of Registered Nurse's

    August 11, 2012 at 6:13 am | Report abuse |
    • Tirsh

      Kayla – where can I find more info about this? Thanks.

      May 10, 2013 at 4:33 am | Report abuse |
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