Inmate charged in shooting deaths of 2 Kansas deputies
KCTV
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – A 30-year-old inmate was charged Friday in the shooting deaths of two Kansas sheriff’s deputies who were transporting him between a courthouse and jail. The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office on Friday announced charges against Antoine Fielder, 30, but didn’t immediately specify what he is charged with. A news conference was scheduled for later Friday afternoon.
Wyandotte County deputies Patrick Rohrer and Theresa King were killed June 15 when they were apparently overpowered by Fielder in a gated area behind the courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas, possibly with one of their own guns.
Rohrer, 35, died shortly after the shooting and King, 44, died the next day at a hospital. A joint funeral service was Thursday.
Fielder was shot but survived. He has an extensive criminal history.
KCTV
Fielder was tried twice for the June 2015 killing of 22-year-old Kelsey Ewonus, a single mother of a 1-year-old son whose body was found in a parked car in Kansas City, Kansas. But the murder charge was dropped in September after a second trial ended in a hung jury.
Authorities allege that Fielder then fatally shot 55-year-old Rosemarie Harmon in December in Kansas City, Missouri, and wounded her friend. Ballistics testing on a gun stolen during a carjacking in Kansas City, Kansas, earlier in December tied him to Harmon’s slaying.
At the time that the deputies were shot, Fielder already was facing a first-degree murder charge in Jackson County, Missouri, in Harmon’s death as well as multiple charges in Wyandotte County in the carjacking.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Fielder.
He could face charges for additional crimes.
According to court records filed in Harmon’s killing, Fielder bragged to a woman whom he allegedly held at gunpoint that he had killed four people. The court records don’t provide details about those alleged crimes, but Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has said the claims are “under investigation.”
Mark Dupree, the Wyandotte County district attorney, has said that prosecutors did “everything we could to prove to a jury that he was guilty” of killing Ewonus. The charges against Fielder in Ewonus’ killing were dropped in such a way that they could be refiled if new evidence arises.
Ewonus’ father, Kent Ewonus, told WDAF-TV in an interview that he “knew without any doubt” when Fielder was freed that he would kill again.
“I think I am disgusted with a system that would allow such an evil individual to be out on the streets,” he said.
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