KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Family and loved ones shared memories of Michael DeHaan, the victim of an August 21st homicide at a BP gas station in Kansas City, Missouri.
DeHaan, 33, was at the gas station with his girlfriend, Samantha Dunnavent, getting gas when she says a man attacked DeHaan.
Dunnavent was driving a separate vehicle because the couple was moving, she said.
“I was like, ‘No, you’re not going to steal his car,’ is what I said to the dude,” Dunnavent said.
The man accused of killing DeHann, Lorenzo C. Johnson, is charged Jackson County Court with second degree murder, three counts of armed criminal action, first-degree robbery, unlawful use of a weapon, one count of unlawful possession of a firearm and resisting arrest.
Dunnavent says DeHaan left his keys in the car, something he normally didn't do.
“He (Johnson) jumps in Mike’s driver’s seat, closes the door,” Dunnavent said.
DeHaan fought with Johnson to get him out his car before the incident turned deadly.
“He gets out and shoots him,” Dunnavent said. “And I start screaming, and I told my son to get down on the floor. And I ran around the van and told someone to call 911.”
Dunnavent’s nine-year-old son was with her, but she says she got out of her car to check on DeHaan after Johnson drove off.
“I was just crying, holding him, telling him to hang in there and that I loved him and just to stay strong,” Dunnavent said.
She had to stay at the crime scene to give her statement to detectives, but found out later that night DeHaan died at the hospital.
“I just fell to my knees because he’s my everything,” Dunnavent said. “He’s been my everything for the past four years.”
DeHaan’s mother, Tammy, says her son was her everything his entire life.
“The pain of losing a child is tremendous,” DeHaan'd mother said. “I can’t tell you how devastating it is.”
She says her son was the youngest of three boys and had an unforgettable personality.
“He was an amazing person, inside and out,” DeHaan said. “Michael had a spark. He just was filled with so much life in all the pictures that you see that people have been sending.”
His death came just a few days after she moved into a new apartment.
Now, she’s left to unpack items that have a whole new meaning.
“Every box I unpack has Michael in there,” DeHaan said. “Trying to put my life back together without Michael has been very hard.”
She says she worries most for his daughter, who will be 12 this year.
It’s why she’s packing up some of his favorite items and putting them in a chest for his daughter.
“Everything in here is everything about him,” she said.
The worst part, she and Dunnavent said, is how preventable his death was.
“I want people to consider that it’s not only, you know, the person that they’re targeting, it’s their whole entire family or their friends too,” Dunnavent said.
According to data from KCPD, nearly all homicides this year in Kansas City, Missouri, have been committed with a gun.
“You wonder what he went through when he saw that gun pointed at him, when he gave him the car,” DeHaan said. “It’d be different if it wasn’t how. He was only simply getting gas.”
DeHaan says it’s a relief Johnson has been caught and charged so he can’t harm others, and she’s even been sharing a GoFundMe to raise money for funeral expenses and for his daughter.
Still, there’s a Michael-sized hole in her heart.
“That person doesn’t realize what he took,” DeHaan said. “Nothing’s going to bring my son back, and that’s the hardest thing.”
