‘Taught us parents,’ too: Remembering daycare owner killed in Riverside double homicide

The 50-year-old Wichita woman fatally shot in her Riverside house in a double homicide was known to care for more than just the children at her in-home daycare.

Vanessa Crawford was remembered affectionately by her neighbors and had a huge impact on the lives of homeless families as a longtime volunteer for Family Promise of Greater Wichita.

She also poured her wisdom into the mothers of the children she watched, one said.

And despite hosting an at-home daycare, Crawford saw to it that the kids she cared for got plenty of educational opportunities, even outside of her home.

Crawford had a bus she used to take the children all around town: Botanica, Sedgwick County Zoo, Exploration Place, pools and parks.

“Every day (my children) had a story of what they did,” Ashley Bergman said. “Every day she had things planned for them.”

Bergman said the bus, which she upgraded from a passenger van, was known to the children as “grandma’s bus.” She was known as “grandma Vanessa” to all the children who knew her, her family said.

Crawford was the only daycare who would take Bergman’s firstborn when they moved to the area in 2016, she said. Crawford didn’t balk at taking in Bergman’s son, who has a condition that regularly causes him seizures.

She said Crawford was sweet and patient with her two children. But she also showed the same love to parents.

There were times that Bergman skipped breakfast to get her boys out the door. Crawford would insist she sat down to eat.

“She was basically a living Bluey, the kid’s TV show,” Bergman said. “She taught us parents how to parent even better.”

The fatal shooting

Crawford and 58-year-old Donald Eckert were discovered dead inside her home by a parent dropping off their child around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday in the 1100 block of North Woodrow.

The door was locked, so the woman looked through the window and saw the two slumped over. They had been fatally shot. She called the family, who called 911.

Both Crawford and Eckert were pronounced dead at the scene.

Family said Crawford had a deep, enduring faith and a servant’s heart.

“Probably due to the challenges life threw at her from a young age, she understood that there was no black-and-white when it came to understanding people or situations — only a brilliant spectrum of color and possibility,” Crawford’s sister-in-law, Sadie Stanton, said in a message on behalf of the family.

“Vanessa believed wholeheartedly that no person was undeserving of love, and was a fierce protector and the broken and downtrodden.”

Anyone she met became family, her family said.

“For all her softness, she was also loud and blunt and outspoken,” family wrote in a GoFundMe to help with funeral costs and a memorial at Botanica. “She would tell you what you needed to hear, even when you didn’t want to. Her laugh was infectious, she was ornery to her core, and she was a hell of a card player.”

Eckert’s family declined to speak to The Eagle.

On Facebook, one family member remembered Eckert as a “Great person and a wonderful fun cousin. Gone too soon.”

It’s unclear what the relationship was between the two victims.

After the shooting, Vanessa Crawford’s estranged husband, Charles Crawford, was found a block north of the home with a handgun and making suicidal threats, police said. The 62-year-old was taken into custody Tuesday after roughly a two-hour standoff that led to a SWAT response.

Charles Crawford was charged Friday with capital murder in the deaths of Vanessa Crawford and Eckert.

He said he was separated, but not divorced, from Vanessa, and indicated his home address as the house where victims were killed, court documents show.

‘Always teaching’

Neighbors all reminisced about how they loved Vanessa Crawford.

“She was a wonderful person,” said one neighbor who asked not to be named. “Everyone around her loves her.”

Naomi Duncan, who lives across the street, said her three children held a lemonade stand with cookies the week before. Crawford came to buy some cookies and gave them $20.

“She didn’t know a stranger,” Duncan said. “Loved the kids.”

Neighbors would constantly see Crawford taking the children on outings, including to a nearby park or church. Crawford also taught the children about plants in her backyard garden.

“So much information and wealth of knowledge to our kiddos,” Bergman said. “Just always teaching them.”

It wasn’t just the kiddos.

Crawford also volunteered as a coordinator through the Family Promise of Greater Wichita, assisting mothers and children who were at-risk and homeless.

The nonprofit partners with area churches to provide meals, shelter and transportation to families, and serves several hundred families a year.

Crawford had volunteered with the group since its 2016 start in Wichita. Charles Crawford had also volunteered.

“So we are heartbroken with that too,” the nonprofit’s executive director Dawn Epp said.

Vanessa Crawford was the volunteer coordinator at her old church and a volunteer at her new one, Riverside Christian Church. Epp said she partly chose the new church because they participated in the program with the nonprofit.

“There was just something special about Vanessa,” Epp said. “She was just able to relate to our families … It never fails. They all loved Vanessa.”

Crawford often connected with the families over a meal and would stay the night with them too, Epp said.

“She just had a way of connecting with them. They could just relate to her … she was just a kindred spirit to all of them. They felt comfortable with her,” Epp said. “She was amazing with the moms in our program and all the kids loved her too … She was just an encourager and supporter of the moms and encouraged them that they could do this.”

Wichita Eagle reporter Eduardo Castillo contributed to reporting.