‘Am I looking at the person that killed my son?’ Mom seeks help finding baby’s killer

Juhna Payton started to break into tears as she described how she tried to shield her son from a gunman who opened fire on their rental car two years ago in Kansas City.

“I turned to cover my baby up and I was shot six times, but it wasn’t enough,” she said. “It wasn’t enough.”

Her son, Tyron Payton, was hit by gunfire and died. He was just two months shy of his second birthday. His killer has not been found.

Payton, who originally introduced herself by her first name and “just a hurt mother,” spoke at a press conference Thursday at Kansas City police headquarters in downtown Kansas City. She requested people to come forward with tips so that her son’s killer could be caught.

This is the second anniversary of the deadly shooting, which occurred the afternoon of Sept. 21, 2020, in the 2900 block of East 33rd Street.

Since then, Payton said it seems like every day the clock gets slower and slower.

“Every day, I think about, you know, am I looking at the person that killed my son?” Payton said. “Am I walking past this person? Am I working with this person?”

It makes her wonder how can she ever really be safe or put her guard down if someone as cruel as her son’s killer is still on the streets, she said.

On the day of the murder, Payton and her husband had gotten a rental car and had packed it to go fishing. As they were sitting outside a house, a man came walking down the street, she said.

“As I looked, everything went slow motion and he pulled out a gun,” said Payton, who added that the stranger began shooting into the car.

Payton, her husband and their son were struck by gunfire. A fourth person in the car was not hit by the spray of gunfire that left the car riddled with bullet holes.

Payton said she helped her husband drive their car to a nearby fire station for help. When firefighters pulled Tyron from the car, he wasn’t moving.

“He didn’t cry, he didn’t move, he did nothing,” she said. “I couldn’t even feel the bullets in me because it didn’t matter. Because I knew that he was gone.”

Payton, who doesn’t think the gunman knew who they were, wants him to know how much work they have done in the community and that they were working to make it a better place. Payton is currently a truancy officer in the Kansas City area working to prevent children from dropping out of school.

“You took my heart away from me,” Payton said. “But I’m not going to let you take my soul.”

She said she was not going to give up trying to find her son’s killer. She urged people to call police if they had information not only in her son’s killing, but any of the murders in the city.

Sgt. Mark Slater with the Kansas City Police Department’s homicide unit said they have not received many tips in the case.

“Somebody knows what happened here,” he said. He urged people to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477) or the homicide unit directly at 816-234-5330 with information.

“It’s very frustrating,” Slater said. “Detectives diligently work on these cases. This case is still active, ongoing. We’re following up any leads that we can, but we do need the community’s help to solve this crime.”