KANSAS CITY, MO. — Police are looking for the person who set several cars on fire.
It happened Thursday morning at the South Kansas City Business Center on Bannister road near Holmes.
Just before 4:30 a.m., security cameras captured a black SUV with its lights off pulling into the center’s lot. The vehicle parked in front of the Lohan Chiropractic & Acupuncture Clinic and then drove out of one camera's range.
“But about another 10 minutes from another angle we see the first car catching on fire, so I don’t think that they got out of their car. They just threw something and then it caught on fire,” Mi Sun Kim, the office manager at Lohan Chiropractic & Acupuncture Clinic, said.
Other cameras caught the moment flames spread before firefighters arrived.
The Heartland Community Credit Union told 41 Action News at least one of the vehicles burned to a crisp belongs to them and that police are investigating this as arson.
“It’s been a slew of events, it's not just this one accident that’s an anomaly,” Kim said.
Kim added in January, someone set a pick-up truck parked in the lot on fire.
Then the following month, vandals targeted their shuttle van.
“They knew what they were doing because they just picked the lock, opened it up and took everything that they could,” Kim said.
It prompted them to step up security.
Something that the Joshua Center, which works with children, did last June when thieves struck their office. Mike Sumler, a therapist at the Joshua Center, said Thursday the charred cars are an unwelcome sight.
“Some of the parents are anxious and they have been worried about you know whether if they are safe to come to our center because of the way it looks,” Sumler said.
He hopes some measures are taken with these cars to prevent this from happening again.
“I just question about whether if it’s all that safe to have them parked here overnight all the time. Especially in that sort of location where it’s kind of sitting out there for anybody to see that’s driving down Bannister Road,” Sumler said.
41 Action News did reach out to KCPD Thursday to see if they’ve made any arrests in any of the earlier incidents but our calls and e-mails went unanswered.
“Just be a little bit more careful because we can’t count on other people to protect our things,” Kim said.
If you know anything about Thursday morning’s arson. Call the KC Crimestoppers TIPS Hotline, 816-474-TIPS (8477).
