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Three dead in shootings at Jewish centers in Kansas

FOX NEWS — Three people have been killed in shootings at two Jewish centers in the Kansas City area, authorities say, while a 15-year-old boy is in critic...

FOX NEWS — Three people have been killed in shootings at two Jewish centers in the Kansas City area, authorities say, while a 15-year-old boy is in critical condition.

Overland Park police told Fox News that the shootings occurred at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park and the nearby Village Shalom, an assisted living facility.

Overland Park city spokesman Sean Reilly says two people died at the Jewish Community Center campus and one was killed at Village Shalom. A 15-year-old boy who was brought from the scene of the Jewish Community Center is in critical condition, Overland Park Medical Center spokeswoman Christine Hamele said.

Overland Park Fire Department spokesman Jason Rhodes told the Associated Press that one man, in his 70’s, was taken into custody as a person of interest.

The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park posted on its Facebook page that a “shooting incident” happened near the White Theater entrance and the building is on lockdown.

There is a heavy police presence at the complex and the entrance is blocked off.

Auditions for the KC SuperStar competition were scheduled to be held Sunday at the Jewish Community Center. On Sunday afternoon, the website for KC SuperStar, which is a singing competition for high school students, said the auditions were cancelled.

The shootings, which began around 1 p.m. local time, came on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

“My son and I were walking into the Jewish Community Center this afternoon for an umpire clinic, around the westside and all of the sudden we heard a gunshot, a pretty loud gunshot,” Mike Metcalf, an area resident, told Fox 4. “I turned to look to my right and I can see a man standing outside a car with a shotgun, what to me looked like a shotgun, and there was somebody laying on the ground.”

Rod Wheeler, a former criminal investigator, told Fox News that the area of the shootings is very upscale.

 

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