LEAWOOD, Kan. — Police arrested five people following a standoff at the America’s Best Value Inn in Blue Springs Friday afternoon. The standoff started shortly after 1 a.m., after police say three men stole a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday from a man in a driveway near 143rd Terrace and Windsor Circle in Leawood.
FOX 4’s Megan Dillard spoke with a Leawood father named Tim Carr who said three of five people first tried to steal his daughter’s car from the family’s driveway just a few hours before the standoff. A neighbor said the suspects may have thought the neighborhood was an easy target.
“I just think people think it’s easy pickings because no one knows where it is and we’re out in the country and everything like that,” neighbor David Cashion said.
He lives in a quiet Johnson County, Kan. neighborhood near the state line where neighbors walk the streets together, walk their dogs and enjoy the nice weather. Cashion said in the last nine months the area has seen an upswing in crime, including what happened to his goddaughter and neighbor Thursday night.
“To have something like this happen to her I’m sure will scare her for a long time. It’s just senseless,” Cashion said.
Blue Valley High School junior Gracyn Carr was driving home shortly after 10 Thursday night. That’s when her father, Tim, said three men surrounded his daughter’s car. Her mother, screaming, watched the whole thing unfold from the front door, just feet away.
Tim said one of the men pretended he had a gun. After hearing his wife’s screams, he said he feared the worst.
“I thought somebody died. That’s the first thing that goes through your mind, something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong,” he said.
Tim said Gracyn stayed in her car while her mother screamed for him to come help, scaring the suspects.
“Fortunately, when I got up the stairs, they were pulling out and my daughter was running into the house, obviously hysterical,” he recalled.
Tim said he knows the outcome could’ve been much worse, though he’s shocked someone had the nerve to approach his teenage daughter just feet from his front door.
“I’m surprised anybody would pull in here, but it just goes to show you what lengths people will go to get what they want,” he said.
Criminal activity that Tim and Cashion say they won’t stand for in their neighborhood.
“It’s a very foreign concept to us to have all of this stuff happening out here. How can you, in good conscience, just go up in somebody else’s driveway, and this poor little girl who is in high school and terrorize her, is completely moronic and such a foreign abstract thought to me that somebody could go do that,” Cashion said.
“We’re lucky, she’s very lucky, we’re all lucky,” said Tim.
The teen was not hurt, and police arrested the three suspects as well as two women, following a standoff at America’s Best Value Inn. Police recovered the Jeep Grand Cherokee the men allegedly stole from the driveway near 143rd and Windsor Terrace.