A man living in a tent on a church property in south Kansas City has been charged in the stabbing death of a man who had assisted him Sunday morning, police said.
Kansas City police were called to the First Church of the Nazarene on State Line Road around 11 a.m. Sunday and found a victim with a stab wound to his chest and several people restraining a man, whom authorities identified as Jarod A. Hill. As police took Hill away, he reached for an officer’s holstered pistol, according to charging documents.
Hill was charged Monday in Jackson County Circuit Court with one count of first-degree assault and one count of armed criminal action. According to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, Hill was being held on a $100,000 bond.
Police later spoke with the victim at an area hospital and he told investigators he struggled with Hill as the man stabbed him and held a knife to his neck, according to court documents. The man had deep cuts on his chest and hand.
Witnesses said Hill had been living in a tent on the church grounds for two nights and was angry because someone had spray-painted his tent.
Hill entered the building with the eventual stabbing victim to look at the church’s surveillance footage to see if the act was caught on camera. He was given food and told that the incident was not captured on video. He was asked to leave after telling members of the church’s emergency response team that they were liars, according to the charging document.
Witnesses said the victim later looked up directions to a laundromat for Hill when Hill put the other man in a headlock, pulled a knife and stabbed him in the chest. Hill held the knife to the victim’s throat, they said.
One witness said another armed person handed him a gun and he held the gun to Hill’s chest and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire because there was no bullet in the chamber, according to court documents. Those at the church were able to disarm Hill and restrain him until police arrived.
