Sunday afternoon started out like any other day for Jeff Ashford and his wife and daughter. Ashford, who grew up in Iola and now lives in Shawnee, took his wife and daughter to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City for a talent show. Little did the family know a shooting would take place at the building.
“We got there in the front and I dropped my wife and daughter off,” Ashford said. “I went to park the car and then we were ushered into a room.”
Ashford said they were held in the room for about an hour and a half and the group was told that there had been a shooting but they didn’t know any details.
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, went on a deadly shooting spree. Cross is known for being related to racist organizations like the Klu Klux Klan. Two people were shot at the Center and another was at the Village Shalom Retirement Center.
“When I realized what had happened I was like wow,” Ashford said. “The scary thing is we went in through the front and the shooting was in the back.”
Ashford has no doubt that this was a targeted hate crime and finds it disturbing. He said while waiting in the room there was a World War II display that he read about Hitler and the Holocaust. To find out later that a hate crime was committed shocked him.
“It’s a real small world,” he said. “I wish I could have helped those people but it wasn’t in the cards.”
Now that he has had time to process Ashford has begun asking himself what he would have done to protect his family.
“I believe in the right to carry (a gun) but I don’t carry,” he said. “If I was carrying maybe I could have stopped him. Maybe I could have done something. It doesn’t matter what side of the debate you’re on, but how will you protect yourself.”
