On a warm Saturday afternoon, two girls sit in blue lawn chairs outside a driveway. They watch as a memorial grows and overflows along their corner of the street.
“This is for Sir,” pipes up the younger, her fingers busy braiding the other’s hair. She says 6-year-old Sir’Antonio Brown, fatally shot on the 3100 block of Greeley Avenue, was a relative.
“His favorite color is green. … People can come bring stuff if they want.”
And many already have. Bikes. Candles. Three balloons spelling “S-I-R.” A wooden cross planted in the dirt.
The memorial stands where Sir played outside Wednesday before gunmen exited a car and began firing. The young boy, called a “jokester” by his teacher, was struck and killed.
Days later, there have been no arrests in Sir’s case. But police say they are getting closer to bringing the family justice.
Nancy Chartrand, a spokeswoman with the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department, said detectives are making “significant progress” in apprehending suspects, though she would not clarify exactly what that meant.
Chartrand did say, however, that the public’s information has been helpful, and she encouraged more people to come forward.
“We have received tips,” she said. “While you may not think the information you have is particularly earth-shattering, we still ask them to call.”
Though Sir may not have been the intended target, Chartrand said the shooters would have known they could hit and kill the child.
“He was clearly visible,” she said.
On Thursday, officers located a maroon 2000s model Subaru Legacy in Kansas City, Missouri, believed to have been driven by a suspect that evening.
Police are still searching for more than one suspect, Chartrand said, but she said she couldn’t say how many.
Witnesses told The Star previously that they had seen three masked shooters.
Sir’s great-aunt Shawna Davis-Scott told The Star that, around 6 p.m., the family was outside with Sir when they heard multiple rounds of gunfire.
Davis-Scott looked and saw Sir lying on the ground.
“He loved his family,” Davis-Scott said in an earlier interview. “Down to his grandmother, his mother, his sisters, his aunties, his uncles, his cousins — that 6-year-old felt like he was the protector.”
Standing on the other side of the street on Saturday, Sir’s aunt, Sharon Wills, watches cars slow down when passing by. Some even stop, roll down their windows, and offer condolences.
She crosses the road and picks up a large teddy bear slouching over.
“We’re all grieving,” she said. “The perpetrator will be caught.”
Wills said she has also just lost her son in a gun violence incident, and her mother died not long before that.
“There are no words,” she said, watching the girls straighten up the stuffed animal pile.
A GoFundMe started by the boy’s godmother on Friday has raised more than $4,500 as of Saturday afternoon.