Man charged in machete attack near Kansas City homeless encampment outside City Hall
A man has been arrested and charged with assault in a machete attack at a homeless encampment in front of Kansas City City Hall earlier this week, court records show.
Carl E. Frazier, 50, has been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action, according to a Thursday morning news release from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office.
About 10:50 p.m. Monday, officers responded to City Hall’s south lawn after a report that several people were fighting — one of whom was armed with a machete and another with a shovel, according to the Kansas City Police Department.
The crime scene started at the southeast corner of East 11th and Oak streets, police said. A blood trail then led detectives to the northeast corner of Pershing and Grand. They did not find the victim.
Security footage on City Hall’s surveillance cameras shows Frazier “swinging the machete multiple times at the victim and striking him on the head, causing the victim to fall to the ground,” court records show. Frazier was then seen getting into a tent on the southeast lawn in front of City Hall. He was still holding the machete.
A police captain told detectives he’d seen the same man on the surveillance footage “waving a machete” earlier in the day, according to charging documents.
Police executed a search warrant of Frazier’s tent the following day. Because of “volatile circumstances and officer safety issues,” a judge allowed the tent to be removed from City Hall premises and searched at police headquarters across the street, court records show. No evidence was found inside the tent.
Frazier was advised of his Miranda Rights just after 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to charging documents. He told detectives that two men had approached his tent, one armed with a stick, “and started messing with him.”
He told police that the three of them proceeded to quarrel in the street. Frazier said he believed one of the men had a weapon hidden in his jacket. Frazier told police he was carrying a shank he made out of a window frame — which records referred to as the machete. He admitted to striking one of the men before ditching the weapon near a dumpster and running away when he heard someone shout “police.”
Residents at the encampment said a person bleeding from his head was seen near the Sprint Center, but police could not find him. Officers recovered the “large machete-style weapon” on the south lawn area, according to the Kansas City Police Department.
Police still have not found the victim, court records show.
“It troubles me that we have blood splattered outside of City Hall because there was a machete attack yesterday,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said Tuesday. “That is not something that we should just leave people to have to fend with and deal with.”
The encampment, home to about 50 tents on the south lawn of City Hall, was established in early February. It stands in part as a public protest calling for Kansas City to find better, long-term solutions to housing the approximate 2,000 people without homes.
Lucas, who held regular meeting this week with members of the KC Homeless Union at the encampment, said they’ve discussed working to self-police the area to make sure it’s known that weapons aren’t welcome in the encampment. He added that the safest place for people is in housing that gives them dignity.
