Couple hurt in Kansas City rampage succumb to injuries

A married couple who were critically hurt during a man’s rampage through suburban Kansas City last week succumbed to their injuries Tuesday, police said.

Ann and George Taylor were injured Sept. 2 when the gunman shot and killed three of their neighbors on Woodbridge Lane during a series of attacks that has now left five people dead. Brandon Howell, 34, has been charged in the shootings.

George, 80, and Ann, 86, died early Tuesday afternoon at an area hospital, according to a news release issued by the Kansas City Police Department. In a statement, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office said it will consider additional charges against Howell.

“Be assured that at the appropriate time, today’s sad news of the [Taylors’] passing will be reflected in the state’s case against the defendant,” the statement read.

Darryl Hurst, his mother, Alice Hurst, and Susan Choucroun were shot and killed when the gunman burst into their homes on Woodbridge Lane last week. According to a criminal complaint, Howell shot Choucroun, physically assaulted the Taylors, and then shot Hurst and his mother before fleeing in a Toyota Highlander that belonged to one of the victims.

He fled to a Motel 6 roughly 30 miles away and assaulted three more people before he was captured on the side of a highway after a nearly 12-hour manhunt, the complaint said. Howell was carrying a shotgun at the time of his arrest, according to the criminal complaint.

Mike Mansur, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told the Los Angeles Times that Howell did not know any of the victims and that he was not being sought in any other crimes at the time of the shootings.

Prosecutors have previously said the attacks started out as an attempted burglary.

Howell, a resident of Hutchinson, Kan., had a prior conviction for aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault in Kansas and had been acquitted in the killings of two teenagers who disappeared from the Kansas City area in the late 1990s, authorities said.

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