Father and fitness trainer fatally shot in Kansas City ‘left nothing but good behind’

The video starts and hip hop beats ring out first. Then there’s the vibrancy of Gary Taylor. He’s staring into the camera, dancing along, vibing. The blue hoodie he’s wearing reads: No rich parent. No investors. No handouts. Out the mud.

“You know where I’m at, baby, we at The House,” he says from his gym, Power House Fitness. “Hustling is a habit, you have to make grinding a habit... if all you’s about is some money — God exits the conversation the minute you bring money into it.”

He goes on in the video, posted Feb. 2 on Facebook, urging Black businesses to support one another, asking for partners to help host seminars to teach young, Black entrepreneurs.

“Let’s push each other to be better,” he said. “Let’s push each other to be great.”

Taylor, a father of three, was shot and killed months later, just after 10 p.m. on April 25, near the intersection of 19th and Vine streets. He was 34 years old.

The community’s mourning was immediate. The mayor spoke his condolences, and countless friends and family re-posted Taylor’s Facebook videos to their own pages, re-sharing his words of inspiration and motivation. The day after he was killed, his girlfriend, Rashouna Harris, changed her Facebook profile photo in honor of him.

Harris first met Taylor in 2017 when she walked into the gym off Swope Parkway where he taught.

It was a small space. No bells and whistles, just the basics. At least 20 people were there, and he was training them all — individually, one at a time. He moved around the room with skill, she said.

“Everybody was drenched in sweat. Everybody looked half-dead, at least,” she said with a laugh.

She felt everything she would come to learn Taylor embodied, she said: motivation, hard work, consistency.

In the years following that day, they fell in love and had a son together. Harris even became a personal trainer at Taylor’s gym, Power House.

Then, just as everything seemed to align so well in Taylor’s life, he was gone.

In the hours after the shooting that injured two others and took Taylor’s life, Kansas City police said they believed a fight or argument broke out inside a nearby establishment; a short time later, shots were fired on the street outside. Whether Taylor was involved in the altercation is unclear.

Police are still asking for the public’s help gathering information on a possible suspect and motive.

“When I say this city loved Gary, this city loved Gary. Like, they loved him,” Harris said, clapping her hands for emphasis. “And I just hate that he didn’t realize how much he had already changed people, inspired people.”

Giving back to the community with fitness

“Sometimes you can be busy, but busy wasting time. You see, we ain’t got a lot of time. We gotta work smarter, not harder.” - Taylor, via Facebook live, on Feb. 3

Taylor liked to make lists. He put pen to paper and made goals, set deadlines.

A bouncer for years, he recently started his own security company: Power House Protective Services.

It was just one of many dreams he had.

He and another personal trainer talked about starting another gym together in the urban core. He hosted programs to help fight childhood obesity and loved working with young athletes.

Taylor dreamed of retiring in his 40s so he could travel with his mom and family.

But Kansas City was always home.

“This is what raised me,” Harris recalled him saying. “I want to give this to my people.”

He knew there were plenty of other young people, especially young men, who needed inspiration, who lacked someone to look up to, to push them, Harris said.

Taylor used exercise to help beat hereditary health issues, she said, and he wanted to help others improve their health from the start.

“We gotta take care of ourselves so that we can be here for our children and then that will teach them to also take care of themselves,” he used to say.

Wesley Hamilton, founder of the nonprofit Disabled But Not Really, first got to know Taylor when he took his daughter, who was 9 at the time, to a youth camp Taylor was hosting to encourage kids to practice healthy habits.

“Gary was a pillar in our community. He wanted so much more for those growing up without much,” Hamilton said. “He was a motivator, protector, humble man that unfortunately lost his life in such a senseless act.”

In the past week, Harris has heard from countless people telling their own stories of how Taylor’s training and motivation improved their lives.

“I couldn’t walk,” one woman said of the intensity of Taylor’s workouts. “But I loved it. I’d never been pushed that way before … but I didn’t give up.”

For him, pushing people past their limits wasn’t just about succeeding in the gym, it was meant to leak over into every other aspect of life.

“He always believed, if you want it, you’ve got to go get it,” Harris said.

‘The city needs love’

“Love ain’t something that’s really valued. I don’t think God like that. … I ain’t really trying to die for my loved ones. I’m trying to love them enough to live for my loved ones. It cause pain if I’m dead and gone. It brings joy and happiness if I’m here. You understand, we’ve got to value love.” - Taylor

If the community was his inspiration, Taylor’s children were his motivation.

Sundays were set aside for family. They spent evenings at his mother’s house for dinner with his brother.

Most days during the week he’d have all three kids with him at the gym. He would lift his youngest son up to reach the pull-up bar, let his oldest son help bench press weights — all four of their hands wrapped around the bar — while his daughter jumped in on one of the women’s cardio classes.

At home, it was time to be silly — dancing, re-enacting TikTok videos.

His 6-year-old would pull him outside to toss around the football, his 12-year-old daughter would curl up with him on the couch to watch TV, and the 18-month-old was partial to his dad’s rendition of the book “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” at bedtime.

Taylor always talked about the blueprint of his life, Harris said. And his kids were the foundation.

He talked of giving his kids the opportunity to take over the Power House legacy someday. He had already started teaching his daughter about entrepreneurship.

She made T-shirts and he helped her sell them. He taught her about turning a profit, paying overhead costs, and putting what money was left into saving.

“He really put his everything into them children, and it’s such a beautiful thing,” Harris said.

On Sunday, she stood in the now mostly-empty gym. Just a week before, it was filled with sweaty people cracking jokes. Music blasting. Taylor photo-bombing selfies.

The walls are bare now, the equipment is gone and the fake turf is rolled up into heavy cylinders.

Harris is taking over the Power House business, but she needs to step back first, to get her bearings as she searches for a new space and works to keep Taylor’s projects and dreams alive.

“I’m just so proud of the fact that though he’s gone, he left nothing but good behind,” she said.

She still doesn’t know why her boyfriend lost his life to senseless violence all too common in Kansas City.

Taylor’s death marked the 48th homicide in Kansas City this year, most of which were the result of gun violence. Kansas City ended last year with 182 homicides, the most in the city’s history in a single year, according to data maintained by The Star.

Asked around the time of Taylor’s death if the city’s crime strategies were working, Mayor Quinton Lucas — who also visited the site of Taylor’s killing — said “obviously not.” Taylor’s blood was still visible on the pavement beside him.

“The gun violence is literally out of control,” Harris said, before echoing what the pastor at Taylor’s funeral said the day before at Center High School. The crowd was packed into the stands as if there for Friday night football.

“This city needs love.”

That’s what Taylor was all about: teaching people to love themselves, so they can cherish others. So that the violence comes to an end.

The Power House legacy

“You know me, it’s a good day to have a good day, baby. Do something, be somebody phenomenal. You are somebody phenomenal. You are great. You are amazing. You are beautiful. You are captivating. You are everything divine. You’re perfect the way you are.” - Taylor, via Facebook live, on Feb. 3

Roughly 100 people, many wearing Power House shirts, gathered in front of the former gym, now just an empty room between Chinese and Mexican restaurants.

A line of bikers rumbled into the parking lot, then joined the crowd. Their black leather jackets and vest labeled them Zodiac Motorcycle Club, the oldest African American motorcycle club in Kansas City, housed at 18th and Vine, just yards from where Taylor was killed. One rider dismounted, then embraced Harris.

Blue and silver balloons wobbled in the wind. Large balloons with Taylor’s initials bobbed taller than the rest.

“Love on each other while you’re here,” Taylor’s brother, Brian, said to the crowd gathered like a crescent moon around him.

Harris and Taylor’s son scampered around in a shirt that read “awesome like dad.” His grandmother slowed his roll momentarily to wrap a balloon around his wrist.

The crowd quieted. Together, they launched a few hundred balloons upward. Harris held her phone high, recording the shiny bulbs growing smaller against the sky. She smiled.

“He never realized how much he inspired and changed and motivated people,” she said later. “And for him to look down and see this; I know he’s smiling at us.”

Gun violence will be the subject of a new, statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.

To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.

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