Aviva Okeson-Haberman, a radio journalist from Kansas City, died from a gunshot wound
A 24-year-old radio journalist based in Kansas City, Missouri, died from gunshot wound, her station, KCUR announced, after she appeared to be struck by a stray bullet over the weekend.
The bullet came through the window of her first-floor apartment in the Santa Fe area of the city, police said.
Her death comes as the city comes off its worst-ever year for homicides, with 182 killings reported by police in 2020.
So far this year, there have been at least 71 homicides in the Kansas City area, according to data tracked by KSHB.
A colleague of Aviva Okeson-Haberman found her in her apartment on Friday afternoon, bleeding from the wound. She hadn’t responded to messages throughout the day.
The police arrived on the scene at 3:17 p.m., and Okeson-Haberman was transported to a local hospital, where she was put on life support.
She was pronounced dead on Sunday.
Police are now investigating the shooting.
A colleague found Okeson-Haberman at her Kansas City, Missouri, apartment bleeding from a gunshot wound on Friday afternoon, after she failed to reply to messages
Okeson-Haberman lived in a first-floor apartment in the Santa Fe section of the city
A bullet came through the window of her apartment on Friday, and struck her
‘We, at KCUR, join her family and friends in mourning her passing,’ the station wrote in a statement.
Okeson-Haberman graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in 2019.
While still a student at the school, she oversaw more than 40 of her fellow students as she produced weekly shows for the student-run television station, MUTV.
She earned a Sigma Delta Chi award for investigative reporting.
She and a colleague had found out that thousands of calls went unanswered at the Missouri Elder Abuse hotline. That story led to an investigation into the hotline’s practices by the Missouri Attorney General.
After graduating, Okeson-Haberman worked as a reporter for about a year at KBIA, the university’s public radio station. Two of the stories she worked on there were picked up by ‘Here & Now,’ a public radio program carried by more than 450 public radio stations across the country.
Okeson-Haberman graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 2019
She joined KCUR, the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, in June 2019 as a Missouri politics and government reporter, having interned at the station a year before.
‘Aviva was brilliant,’ KCUR News Director Lisa Rodriguez said. ‘Even as an intern, her approach to storytelling and her ability to hold those in power accountable paralleled many a veteran reporter.’
Okeson-Haberman was particularly interested in the foster care system, the station reported, as she was in the system as an adolescent.
‘She cared deeply about children in foster care, and she also wanted to do the most thorough possible job understanding the state’s prison system and it’s juvenile justice system,’ said Scott Canon, managing editor of the Kansas News Service, who recruited Okeson-Haberman for her job at KCUR.
‘She was brimming with ideas for stories that she thought just might improve the lives of people who were up against the worst circumstances.’
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted his thoughts on Okeson-Haberman’s career
Okeson-Haberman was supposed to start a new role covering social issues and criminal justice in May for the Kansas News Service, and was looking for an apartment in Lawrence, Kansas hours before she died.
In her application, she wrote, ‘Social services is a tough beat, but I’m a tough reporter.’
‘I’ll ask the hard questions, dig into the data and spend time building trust with sources. It’s what’s required to provide an unflinching look at how state government affects those entrusted to its care.’
Some of the stories she has written over her short career exposed corruption at the county and the inequities in the distribution of COVID vaccines.
‘Aviva was a creative, thorough, challenging and insightful reporter,’ Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted upon hearing the news.
‘Always prepared, she told the full and complex story of our city in one of the most challenging years in its history,’ he wrote. ‘Her life showed us her compassion for those who too often were voiceless.’
‘Her death lays bare our gravest unsolved epidemic and the preventable tragedies too many families endure, the mayor continued, ‘My heart and my thoughts go to her family, her friends, her colleagues, and a community that respected her and will miss out on all she had to share ahead.’
The night that Okeson-Haberman was admitted to the hospital, the radio station reported, five other gunshot victims were also admitted.
Okeson-Haberman is survived by her parents, two younger sister and her maternal grandparents.
