By TONY RIZZO
The Kansas City Star
A taxicab, its side windows shattered, sat in the middle of the street with the driver’s bullet-riddled body still inside.
Thirty feet away, Merlon Ragland stood on the front porch of the home day care she operates on East 60th Street and greeted parents as they dropped off their children.
Pushing strollers or carrying little ones on their hips, they negotiated a maze of police crime scene tape to reach her.
The scene was nothing new to Ragland and her mother, longtime residents of 64130 — the ZIP code that has the most killers in Missouri prisons.
Five men, including one of Ragland’s relatives, were shot to death in the 1990s in three incidents on the same block. The taxi driver’s killing was the latest in a more recent string of violent crimes.
“It’s just getting ridiculous,” said Ragland’s mother, Esther Ragland. “You don’t want to open your door to anyone.”
Merlon Ragland needed few words to sum up her neighborhood’s history.
“White flight, black flight and then you’re left with urban blight,” said Ragland, who is black.
Thirty feet away, Merlon Ragland stood on the front porch of the home day care she operates on East 60th Street and greeted parents as they dropped off their children.
Pushing strollers or carrying little ones on their hips, they negotiated a maze of police crime scene tape to reach her.
The scene was nothing new to Ragland and her mother, longtime residents of 64130 — the ZIP code that has the most killers in Missouri prisons.
Five men, including one of Ragland’s relatives, were shot to death in the 1990s in three incidents on the same block. The taxi driver’s killing was the latest in a more recent string of violent crimes.
“It’s just getting ridiculous,” said Ragland’s mother, Esther Ragland. “You don’t want to open your door to anyone.”
Merlon Ragland needed few words to sum up her neighborhood’s history.
“White flight, black flight and then you’re left with urban blight,” said Ragland, who is black.
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