The Raytown School District notified parents about a grisly scene some students witnessed while riding a school bus, but some parents are upset at the district for not being clear enough.
Around 7:15 a.m. Tuesday, someone noticed a man hanging from a tree on the 8500 block of east 47th Street in Kansas City, Missouri.
“I ran out sure enough someone was hanging about two feet off the ground,” Carl Andrews, one of the individuals who saw the body, said.
With every minute, concern grew.
“I knew the school bus was coming around 7:45, and I talked to two officers and said you know there is a school bus and this is a stop, the bus will pulling up and they said they can’t do anything,” said Aaron Walker, who owns the property where the man was found.
What happened after that Walker describes as just bad timing.
“The coroner showed up and they uncovered the body with a yellow bag and the bus just happened to show up right then and they [coroner] of course didn’t see the bus right away so it was very exposed,” Walker said.
The Raytown School District said there were 14 students on the bus who saw the incident.
In this letter sent to parents, the middle school principal called it a “police crime scene.”
That upset some parents.
“We just want to be able to have the right conversations with our kids,” the mother of one of the 14 students said.
She wishes the district would have been clear.
“Accidents happen and people die everyday, but suicide or hate crime that’s different because we have to explain to them you know why or—it’s just more questions—and some of us aren’t prepared to answer those questions,” the mother said.
The school did make counselors available to the students.
KCPD is still working to identify the man found dead.
