Wichita woman booked on murder charge after man with bicycle killed, officials say
A 31-year-old Wichita woman has been booked into the Sedgwick County Jail after allegedly hitting a man with her vehicle and then getting out to shoot him Friday afternoon at 13th and Oliver, Wichita police spokesperson Paul Cruz said Saturday.
CPR was given to the man, but 54-year-old Merrill Rabus died.
Charity Charmon Blackmon was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder, driving with a suspended license and unsafe turning or stopping;, failure to give proper signal.
The incident was reported to police at 4:25 p.m. Friday. She was booked into jail around 10:40 p.m.
People followed her from the shooting and provided police details, Cruz said in a news release. Those details helped lead to her arrest by a Wichita State University police officer near 14th and Poplar, he said.
She was arrested about 15 minutes after the incident, according to 911 emergency communications.
Cruz said Rabus was on his bicycle when Blackmon struck him with a Plymouth van and then got out and fired a shot that hit him. Police have recovered a handgun.
“Blackmon and Rabus were not known to each other,” he said.
Witnesses told The Eagle that the suspect was driving a white van, facing east on 13th, and reversed into a Church’s Chicken at the corner and then headed north on Oliver.
Friends Martin Dwyer and Ian Weber, both 20, were headed east on 13th and saw the van reversing toward them and saw the man on the ground. Weber pulled off the road. Dwyer ran up to the man.
“People were trying to take his pulse, people were trying to tell him to keep his eyes open,” Dwyer said. “I started talking to him ... he was there, and then he wasn’t.”
Boots, clothing and a bicycle with a basket were strewn on 13th just west of the intersection at Oliver. An officer stood near the items while standing over a cone that witness Stacy Fisher said was marking a bullet.
Blackmon has five convictions and all in Sedgwick County, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records. She was sentenced in 2017 on all the cases.
Her convictions include aggravated endangerment of a child, aggravated assault, criminal damage to property, driving without insurance and another traffic-related charge.
She was released from prison in September 2018 and her parole ended in June 2019, records show.
This was Wichita’s 15th homicide of 2021. Police consider 13 of them to be criminal and two are justified. A justified homicide includes self-defense. Wichita saw a record number of homicides last year, where there were 11 homicides through March 28.
This story was originally published March 27, 2021 at 9:11 AM.