Three dead in shootings at Kansas Jewish centers

The suspect in the Passover Eve killings of three people at two Jewish community centers in the Kansas City area was scheduled to appear in court on Monday to face murder charges.

Police said it was too early to determine if Sunday’s killings were motivated by anti-Semitism, but a leading anti-hate group said the suspect was a former senior member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan movement.

“We know it’s a vicious act of violence. Obviously two Jewish facilities, one might make that assumption,” Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass told a news conference.

The victims included a 14-year-old boy. Authorities in Kansas identified the suspect as Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr., 73. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said Cross was once the grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It said his wife had told the center on Sunday that police informed her Cross had been arrested in connection with the shootings.

Cross was being held on suspicion of premeditated murder in the first degree and was to appear in court on Monday afternoon, according to jail records.

The shootings, which took place on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, started around 1 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park. Two males were shot in a parking lot outside the center, one dying at the scene and the other at a hospital later, police said. Reuters