OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Loved ones gathered Friday night for a candlelight vigil and to pray for answers in the unsolved murder of an Overland Park man.
Dozens of people showed up to New Haven Seventh-day Adventist Church on Antioch Road to mourn the loss of Steve Sawyer, an Air Force veteran, loving son, brother and father.
Police say someone shot and killed Sawyer when he was warming up his car just outside his home on West 83rd Terrace on the morning of New Year’s Eve.
“It was like a nightmare that you would never forget,” said Sawyer’s longtime girlfriend, Denise Thompson, who was home the day he was murdered.
She said Sawyer stepped outside to warm up his car, when she heard yelling, then gunshots. Police think it could’ve been an attempted carjacking, but they haven’t said for sure.
“For them to leave him on the cold concrete and him to leave this Earth that way is so disturbing that we can’t even comprehend it,” said Sawyer’s younger sister, Tamika Jones. “It’s tearing us all apart.”
It’s a pain felt by everyone who gathered inside the church – praying someone comes forward.
“Someone felt like they had the right to take him from our lives and that they continue to walk the streets and we have to mourn his loss,” Jones said as she wiped away tears.
She said her family wants closure, but it will only come once someone is behind bars.
“Whoever did it needs to pay for what they’ve done,” Jones said.
Sawyer’s funeral will be at 11 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 12. The services will be at Watkins Brothers Memorial Chapel on Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd. in Kansas City, Mo.
AdHoc Group Against Crime is offering $1,000 for information that leads to an arrest in this case. Sawyer’s family is also raising money to add to the reward. Their Go Fund Me page has already raised more than $5,000 in reward money.
