Wichita homicide cases with domestic violence ties reached an all-time high last year

A pregnant teen, strangled and stuffed in a trunk.

Five women shot in their homes, with their partners or ex-partners accused.

Three moms fatally beaten, shot or stabbed, allegedly by their adult sons.

The domestic violence death toll in Wichita hit an all-time high last year, according to police. Fifteen of 47 homicides had ties to domestic violence.

“The severity of the kind of injuries or abuse has increased as well,” said Amanda Meyers, executive director of the Wichita Family Crisis Center, the largest area provider of services for domestic violence victims.

The center saw a big spike in demand for services in 2023. Year-over-year calls increased nearly 1,300 to 4,517.

“My subjective feelings on the issue: I think the economy has a lot to do with it,” she said. “And that’s what we hear from clients, is financial insecurity and inflation and things like that.”

She thinks that is why they also saw a spike in 2020, when there was pandemic stress and mass layoffs as many companies shut down work.

The former record for domestic violence homicides was 13 in 2020, when Wichita had a record 59 homicides.

Wichita police tackled the spike in domestic violence then with a federal grant, forming the Domestic Intervention and Violence Reduction Team to arrest a backlog of wanted domestic violence offenders.

Both 2021 and 2022 saw just two killings with ties to domestic violence.

“So why the spike in 2023, I don’t know,” Wichita police Capt. Christian Cory said. “We stayed aggressive in holding offenders accountable for domestic violence and arresting them.”

In 2023, the Crisis Center moved to a new building that has a shelter three times the size of the old. The building, where they offer other related services, is five times the size of the old one.

“We are still at capacity,” Meyers said. “The need is endless.”

She said it’s not uncommon to see that suspects involved in homicides have a history with ties to domestic violence.

“Domestic violence is the predicate to a lot of crime,” she said.

Overall homicides

The 47 homicides in 2023 falls in line with the last several years, except for last year. From 2018-2021, Wichita saw a low of 43 homicides and an average of 50 a year. Cory said the 35 deaths in 2022 may have an anomaly.

Some facts about overall homicides in 2023:

• 15 of the victims, or around 32%, were female; only six, or around 17%, of the people killed in 2022 were female.

• The average age of the victims was around 37; it was about 26 in 2022

• A gun was used in about 80% of the killings, similar to the year before

• There were three double homicides compared with four the year before

• The 11 homicides in July made it the city’s deadliest month in at least five years

• March was the only month without a homicide

• The 47 homicides averages out to be one nearly every eight days.

Intimate partner killings

The domestic-violence related ties in killings can be loosely based. For example, one of the 15 in 2023 was a domestic-related call that ended with an armed man being fatally shot by police.

Authorities also counted two homicides for a pregnant woman.

Record keeping, in general and with the police, has started to be modernized and digitized in recent years. Police recently decided to start sub-categorizing the killings by an intimate partner.

There were seven fatal intimate partner incidents in 2020 and seven in 2023. Nine deaths were attributed to the seven incidents last year.

Here are intimate partner deaths last year:

Jan. 26: Tuyen Nguyen, 46, was shot in her home in the 800 block of West Mount Vernon. She died at the hospital. Police forced entry into the home after getting a call that a man was going to kill his wife and then himself. The husband was found dead in the home.

June 25: Nicole Dempsey, 44, was shot at her home in the 2700 block of North Parkridge. A 911 caller said he may have killed his wife after an argument, police said. The husband, Thomas Dempsey, 47, became unresponsive and died after being taken into police custody.

July 25: Vanessa Crawford, 50, and Donald Eckert, 58, were found fatally shot by a woman dropping off her child at Crawford’s in-home daycare in the 1100 block of North Woodrow in Riverside. Charles Fred Crawford, 62, Vanessa’s estranged husband, was arrested after a standoff with police just up the block, police said. He has been charged with capital murder of more than one person.

Aug. 26: Police found Zaiylah Bronson, 19, dead inside the trunk of her boyfriend’s vehicle in front of his apartment in the 7600 block of East 21st Street. She was 16.5 weeks pregnant. Her boyfriend, Alexander Lewis, 22, who had been charged with capital murder of more than one person, died in jail of self-inflicted asphyxiation.

Nov. 12: The mother of Brittnee MaeLin Wicker, 24, found her daughter fatally shot in her south Wichita duplex. Wicker’s ex-boyfriend, Carlos Anderson-Honeycutt, 26, was arrested two days later in Texas. He’s been charged with first-degree murder.

Nov. 13: Police found Robert Mitchell, 74, fatally shot inside his home in the 3900 block of South Young. A 67-year-old Wichita woman was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder, but no charges have been filed “based on (a) self-defense analysis,” the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office said.

Dec. 21: Deniq Ingram, 23, was fatally shot inside her apartment in the 7700 block of East 32nd Street North. Her stepfather who became her common-law-husband, Larry Eugene Ingram Jr., 43, has been charged with second-degree murder.

Other homicides tied to domestic violence

May 30: Police found Kacy Joel, 46, beaten in the backyard of her home near Central and Edgemoor. She died at the hospital. Her son, Devin Nicolas Joel, 22, has been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated burglary and attempted aggravated robbery.

July 28: Margaret O’Neil, 80, was found fatally shot on her kitchen floor in the 4800 block of North Portwest. Her son was also found fatally shot inside. Police think he killed his mother and then himself.

Sept. 21: Adraine Kenney, 48, was fatally shot in the 800 block of South Mission. A 22-year-old woman, who appears to be Kenney’s daughter, was shot as well. Matthew Alexander III, 30, faces several charges, including first-degree murder. He and Kenney both had their address listed as where the shooting occurred.

Sept. 21: Curtis Lowell McIntosh, 53, was shot during a disturbance at a home in the 2300 block of North Brandon Circle. He died at the scene. Police said the people at the home were acquaintances. The DA’s office said “no charges were filed based on evidence that the act was committed in self-defense.”

Oct. 6: During a welfare check, police found Brenda McNeely, 66, fatally stabbed inside her home in the 2300 block of North Chautauqua. Antonio Darnell Jones, 35, has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. Jones is McNeely’s son, a witness told police. Records list Jones as having the same address as McNeely.

Dec. 3: Daniel Stowe, 50, was killed by police after pulling out a gun in the street in the 4200 block of East Gilbert. Police were originally called there because of a domestic disturbance.