The wind chimes in the front yard of Robert and Roberta Gammon’s house in south Wichita were clanging so hard in the robust wind they could awaken someone from a sound sleep.
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Less than 12 hours earlier, someone had gunned down her husband by the creek that runs behind their house south of I-235 and just west of Broadway. He was hit four times, she said — twice in the head — and she made it to Via Christi Hospital on St. Francis only in time to spend maybe 15 minutes with him before he died.
“You just want to wake up,” Roberta said quietly as she sat in a shaded plastic lawn chair, “and find out it’s all a bad dream.”
Their 23-year-old son had come into their bedroom just after midnight in their house in the 100 block of East 44th Street South and told them there were people rustling around in the backyard.
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Her son later told her that they found two people near the creek, and the intruders confronted them. Police officials later told media at the scene it was a group, though they did not specify how large.
Robert stepped between his son and the others, and one of the intruders opened fire.
“He took the shots that were meant for his son,” Roberta said of her husband.
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Police took several people downtown for questioning. Sgt. Scott Brunow said detectives were interviewing one man extensively, but he did not know as of noon Saturday whether the man had been booked into the Sedgwick County Jail.
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Roberta said she was intent on staying busy. She’d been up all night, and the police had only left at about 7:30 that morning.
Yet she didn’t want to sleep, she said.
“That would mean when I wake up, this won’t have gone away,” she said.
She stared off into the distance, the only sound coming from the wind chimes.
