A Kansas City, Kansas, man has pleaded guilty to murder for a January 2023 police chase that started with a knifepoint carjacking and ended with two people dead after a stolen SUV slammed into their car on Independence Avenue. Charles Matthews, 34, entered the plea to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of resisting on Oct. 1 in Jackson County Circuit Court, and was sentenced to 10 years on each murder count and four years for resisting, with all three sentences running concurrently.
According to FOX4KC.com, Matthews will serve his time in the Missouri Department of Corrections. The station reports he told detectives he had not slept in five days and did not remember the crash or specific details of the chase itself. Court documents cited by the station say Matthews drove away in the SUV and led Kansas City, Kansas, police on the pursuit that would end two lives.
A Carjacking That Turned Into a Deadly Chase
The chain of events began on Jan. 7, 2023, when Kansas City, Kansas, police started investigating an armed carjacking in the 400 block of North 18th Street, as reported by kansascity.com. Police said Matthews approached a 13-year-old boy with a knife and told him to get back after the boy had started his uncle's GMC Terrain on the street. Matthews then fled in the stolen SUV with officers in pursuit.
The chase crossed into Kansas City, Missouri, around 2 a.m. on Interstate 70 at Broadway, the outlet's earlier reporting states. Investigators said Matthews exited the highway and sped through traffic signals on Independence Avenue, at one point reaching 100 miles per hour. According to charging documents referenced in that report, Matthews allegedly said he crossed into Missouri because he thought officers would stop chasing him.
Two Lives Lost at Independence and Hardesty
The stolen SUV sped through a red light at Independence Avenue and Hardesty before crashing into another car, killing two people. Juan Avila, 26, was pronounced dead at the crash site, kansascity.com reported at the time. Gabriela Trejo-Garcia, 44, was taken to the hospital and died two days later from her injuries.
Police said Matthews was traveling 77 miles per hour at the moment of impact, per an earlier account from fox4kc.com, which at the time identified Matthews as 30 years old — a figure that conflicts with the 34 years old listed in the station's more recent reporting on his guilty plea. That earlier coverage also reported that Jackson County prosecutors had initially charged Matthews with two felony counts of second-degree murder, resisting arrest and tampering with a motor vehicle, and noted that relatives who gathered at the Jackson County courthouse in January 2023 said Matthews was not in his right mind, attributing his conduct to drug addiction.
Part of a Broader Pattern of Deadly Pursuits
The case fits into a wider pattern documented across the Kansas City region. Citing a regional data analysis, kansascity.com reported that more than 150 police-chase crashes in the metro area in 2022 resulted in 51 injuries, and that the City of Independence accounted for 33% of those injuries despite engaging in chases at a disproportionate rate. The same analysis found that chases across the area routinely exceeded 100 mph, with some reaching 130 mph, while roughly 56% of police agencies in the metro impose only narrow restrictions on when a pursuit is warranted.
Nationally, the newspaper's reporting placed Kansas third among all states for the rate of fatal crashes involving police chases between 2017 and 2021, behind only Georgia and Virginia, with 1.79% of Kansas's fatal crashes during that span tied to pursuits. Missouri ranked sixth nationally, with 1.6% of its traffic fatalities linked to chases. A separate case highlighted in that reporting described a January 2024 crash on Interstate 435 near Missouri 210, in which a vehicle fleeing police drove the wrong way and crashed head-on into another car, killing both the suspect and an uninvolved bystander.
Under Missouri law, second-degree murder is classified as a class A felony, according to Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 565.021, which also provides that punishment for the offense applies in addition to punishment for a related felony or attempted felony, other than murder or manslaughter. With Matthews's sentences running concurrently, his total term in the Missouri Department of Corrections stands at 10 years.
