Investigation into 81-year-old Andover woman’s killing continues, relative suspected
Police in Andover continue to investigate the killing over the weekend of an 81-year-old woman, allegedly by a 23-year-old male relative she’d just picked up from a local jail.
The woman’s family found her injured in her apartment-style home, in a retirement community in the 400 block of North Lioba, around 3:45 p.m. Sunday and called for help, Andover police Capt. Ben Graber said by phone Monday.
The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment but did not survive. Her name has not yet been released.
Information about the suspect, including his name and his exact relationship with the victim, wasn’t immediately released, either.
Andover Police Chief Buck Buchanan told media at the homicide scene Sunday night that the woman had picked up the relative from a jail, where he’d been for “the past year,” and took him to her home.
She was found by family members who had gone to the woman’s home “to talk to her” Sunday afternoon, Graber said by phone.
Graber said it appears the relative assaulted the woman in some way before taking off in a vehicle, which was later found in Wichita.
It’s still unclear exactly how the woman was killed, or why, he said.
“We’re still looking into that. We’re not 100% sure exactly what happened,” Graber said, adding that police on Monday were “still searching the scene, the vehicle and everything that’s involved.”
Police used Wichita’s Flock automated license plate reading camera system to track the vehicle to 13th and Woodlawn and then to 21st and Oliver, where Graber said the relative was arrested during a traffic stop.
“Using the Flock, it was able to help us pinpoint a better location where he was at, where he had been possibly hanging around,” he said.
Graber said the relative was “taken into custody” during the traffic stop but quickly “passed out on us.” He said police think the relative “may have ingested some drugs” after he was stopped by police, so he was taken to a local hospital “as a precautionary measure.”
He’s expected to be booked into jail at some point, but police don’t yet know on what charges, Graber said Monday.
“We still need to talk to him and figure out what exactly happened and what his involvement was,” he said, adding that the relative is the only suspect in the woman’s death.
This story was originally published August 29, 2022 at 10:22 AM.
