‘The community is reeling’: Killing of KC restaurateur Shaun Brady sparks grief, anger

It was becoming tradition. When members of Kansas City’s tightly knit Irish community died, it was at Shaun Brady’s restaurant in Brookside that loved ones celebrated the life of the one who passed.

When 101 The Fox radio host Brian “Slacker” Adams died in April, they went to Brady & Fox Restaurant & Lounge. When longtime Irish community and parade supporter Brian Joseph O’Malley died last year, they went to Brady’s.

Brady’s and the Irish Center. Those were the places.

Now it is Brady, 44, married with a young family, who is being mourned, shot and killed Wednesday evening outside his restaurant, at 751 E. 63rd St. east of the Brookside shops. Along with tears, there is frustration and anger.

“The community is reeling,” said Mary Kate Gliedt, executive director of the Kansas City Irish Center. “No one is sure what to do or what to say next. It’s awful.

“Shaun’s was the place I’d have meetings. I brought volunteers there for Christmas lunch. I brought family there. The fact that Shaun’s place was not safe for Shaun is tragic. The fact that he passed away there is like an extra twist of the knife.”

The shooting occurred shortly after 5 p.m. when Brady left his restaurant to take out trash and reportedly came across a group gathered around a car. A fight erupted, and security cameras would capture the moment. Gun shots rang out. Brady, with multiple bullet wounds, was rushed to an area hospital, where he died.

Kansas City police on Thursday announced that they arrested two teenage boys within an hour of the shooting, not far away and with the car nearby. Later Thursday, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office announced that one juvenile was charged with 2nd degree murder, armed criminal action and felony theft of a motor vehicle. Charges had yet to be announced against the second. Neither is being named because they are juveniles.

For prosecuting attorney Jean Peters Baker, Brady’s death is personal.

“My husband and I are shocked and heartbroken over the senseless loss of our friend,” Baker wrote to The Star. “How could one not become Shaun’s friend? His personality was infectious, he was gregarious, warm and genuinely funny.

“He told great stories about growing up in Ireland and his affection for that beautiful place. He always offered a landing spot for me and my family for any occasion. . . . His death is a loss to us and to the surrounding community. Shaun was the kind of guy who would always jump in to help you – and ‘you’ meant anyone needing help.

“He was community. . . .we promise that his loss will not be forgotten.”

News of Brady’s death immediately reached far from Kansas City, reported almost instantaneously by The Irish Times. The Times’ story noted how Brady, after graduating from Technological University Dublin, then known as Dublin Institute of Technology, “met his wife from Kansas while she was traveling in Ireland.”

The Times said they married in 2005. Brady’s father, the site reported, ran a well-known pub in Nenagh called The Brady Carmel, formerly known as The Moon & Sixpence, in the Summerhill area. His family came from Ardcroney, outside of Nenagh.

“Our friend. Our friend,” Virginia O’Malley, widow of Brian O’Malley, lamented Thursday over Brady’s death. “He was so kind. He would do anything for you.”

O’Malley recalled Brady’s immediate reaction after hearing that her husband was sick. He offered to throw a party. He would later also host the wake.

“Shaun said, ‘Whatever you want to do. We will do it here,’” O’Malley recalled. “I was in there last week. He came to the table and said, ‘What’s new?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I have a new grandson. His name is Brady.’

“The man started to cry. He put his hand over his heart. He cried.”

‘He’d give away the store’

Brady has, for years, been deeply involved in the annual Kansas City Irish Fest, set to begin Friday and extend over the Labor Day weekend. He hosted an often sold-out Irish breakfast following a Sunday morning Mass, this year to be held Sunday morning at the Crown Center Ice Terrace.

Out of respect for Brady, the breakfast has been canceled, and refunds will be offered to those who purchased tickets. The 9:30 Mass, however, will commence.

“We are using the time afterwards to do an Irish toast and blessing and letting people who knew Shaun come together,” festival director Keli O’Neill Wenzel said.

Wenzel’s father and Brady’s friend, Pat O’Neill, a founder of the festival, spoke of Brady’s “outsized personality.”

“He spoke his mind. He was funny. He minced no words,” O’Neill said. “ But I also think he had, probably, the softest heart of any man I’ve ever known.

“He supported so many of us when we lost a family member. I mean he’d give away the store, whatever it took.”

Brady’s restaurant is housed in a building owned by Kansas City developer Butch Rigby.

“I was over at a dinner when it happened,” Rigby said. “I came here from there. I, of course, have seen it on videotape. We have a very clear videotape. The whole thing on cameras. It was just tragic. It was just unnecessary. . . . It was horrible.”

Echoing others, Rigby described Brady as “a hard person to forget. . .a fun, gregarious personality who used every drip of his Irish brogue.”

“Unfortunately” Rigby said, “he also, I mean, he wasn’t going to let anybody break into his car.”

From Rigby’s telling, based on his view of the video, Brady stepped from his restaurant at very moment people were jiggering with a vehicle, presumably his.

“Confrontation ensued,” Rigby said. “Fisticuffs ensued. Then, of course, some monster gets out and decides to execute somebody just because they don’t like somebody fighting him over a car.”

Calls to address crime in Brookside

Frustrated, Rigby said that Brady’s death is the consequence of increasing break-ins and car thefts by individuals, often minors, carrying guns. Law enforcement, he said, needs to step up.

“I do believe that this is limited to a small subset that are out there doing this and continuing to do this,” Rigby said. “I think they have to target them. They have to put them off the streets. They have to make it safer for the rest of us.”

In August, some 200 residents of Waldo and Brookside met with community leaders and the Kansas City police to address car thefts and property crimes, both on the rise since 2021. Capt. Justin Pinkerton, who hires for the department, noted that the Metro Patrol Division had lost a quarter of its staff in the last 15 years.

“Take roughly 25% away from the workforce of any organization, anybody, it’s going to detract from the product,” Pinkerton told the residents. “We’re not saying that’s acceptable, but we also only have this much staff to deal with that big of a problem. We can only do so much and the calls just keep coming.”

Sean Ackerson is the executive director of the Southtown Council. He also is the district manager for the Brookside Community Improvement District and the Troost Community Improvement District.

“Sean was such a vibrant guy and so well-liked,” he said. “To lose his life because somebody was trying to steal his car. . . I’ll be relieved when they put them away as adults. . . .

“All I can think is how senseless this was. Shaun was just a guy trying to run a business, trying to put food on the table for his customers and his family. He lost his life because a bunch of kids felt like they could take it without consequence. . . .We’ve been saying it for a while. It can’t continue to go on the way it’s going on.”