By Laura Bauer
The Kansas City Star
CHRISTIAN COUNTY, Mo. — Patricia “Val” Drinkall thinks back on the shock, then numbness, that enveloped her last month when two Christian County deputies were shot and killed.
A probation officer in the same southwest Missouri county, Drinkall said she soon knew she had to do something in response to the death of her two friends. Good men, she said, who each “loved protecting people.”
“There are families without fathers, without husbands now, and this did not have to happen,” Drinkall told The Star. “This was preventable.”
Richard Dean Bird, 45, was out on $50,000 bond when Deputy Gabriel Ramirez, 30, pulled him over in Highlandville, 190 miles southeast of Kansas City. Authorities say Bird, a felon and repeat offender, fatally shot Ramirez, prompting a manhunt that ended in a shootout.
It’s in that shootout where Deputy Michael “Mike” Hislope, 40, was killed trying to help two injured deputies. Bird was also killed.
The deputies’ deaths have many across the state and region demanding change, from stronger prison sentences for some dangerous offenders to bond reform and keeping violent repeat offenders in jail while their case is going through the court process.
In Drinkall’s mind, she said the shootings were preventable because she doesn’t believe Bird should have been released on bond in nearby Stone County after a recent burglary charge. With criminal histories in Kansas and Missouri , Bird had served time in prison for a 2014 incident where he was accused of firing shots at a KC-area deputy.
“I’m not happy that Bird was let out by the Stone County judge,” said Drinkall, 30. “But at the end of the day, looking at it (as) a black and white matter, he had the legal right to do so. And I just don’t want any other judge to be put in that position. … I asked myself, ‘What can be done?’
That question alone led her to google “how to start a petition?”
‘Loud alarm’ for change
Days after the shootings, Drinkall — not in her position as a probation officer, she said, but as an individual who had just lost two friends — created a Change.org petition, titled “Change laws to deny bond for violent felons.”
As of Thursday morning, more than 7,300 people had signed it.
“This tragedy serves as a loud alarm that something must change in Missouri’s and other states’ laws regarding bail and bonds,” the petition said. “This is not the first time a violent felon, who’s proven to be capable of lethal behavior, has been allowed to walk free.”
“This happens time and time again,” it said, “even though individuals with violent criminal histories are prone to re-offend if released on bond. We need to keep violent repeat offenders incarcerated until their new charges are adjudicated. It is a practical step to preventing further tragedies.”
The Change.org petition included this phrase: “NO BOND FOR VIOLENT REPEAT OFFENDERS.”
After describing the need for the change, Drinkall — who had been close friends with Hislope for years — wrote: “This is for the boys. I love you, Mike. Till we meet, again, in heaven, Gabe.”
A resident from Nixa , in Christian County , signed the petition and called for “meaningful accountability for repeat offenders.” Bird, she said “was not an unknown threat. His history was documented.”
“The warning signs were there,” the Nixa woman wrote. “Yet time and again, he walked free without truly facing the consequences of his actions. And now Deputies Hislope and Ramirez are gone. Two lives taken. Two families shattered. A community forever changed.”
Rep. Jamie Gragg , a Republican from Ozark , said when he’s home in Christian County he can feel the pain people have after losing the deputies. He said he knows it’s not just southwest Missouri that’s been impacted.
“Even if you’re in Moberly, Missouri , if you’re in Sikeston, Missouri , if you’re in St. Joe,” Gragg said, “they’re all saying, ‘We lost two deputies.’”
And searching for various ways to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Unfortunately, it takes something like this to make that reform,” the lawmaker said.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway wrote about the issue in an opinion piece for The Star days after the shootings.
“When violent, repeat offenders are kept behind bars, deputies go home to their families,” Hanaway wrote. “The murder of two Missouri law enforcement officers and the serious wounding of two others was not simply an unforeseeable act of evil, it was the failure of a system that too often releases dangerous criminals back onto our streets.”
The AG said that “we need accountability that cannot be negotiated away.
“We need a system where dangerous, repeat offenders are not set free after serving only a small percentage of their sentence, only to commit more violence. We need accountability that cannot be negotiated away.”
The question that many have regarding the deputies’ deaths, Gragg said, is why Bird was out on the streets after having been arrested days earlier for second-degree burglary? And why was the bond just $50,000?
Gragg said many are left wondering, “Why is that as high as you can go?”
“That’s where the anger is right now,” he said. “That’s where the people are reading it right now.”
Decades of crime
In September 2014 , when Bird lived in Belton , he was arrested and charged for allegedly firing shots at a Johnson County, Kansas, sheriff’s deputy. The deputy was investigating a theft at a construction site at 191st Street and State Line Road .
According to an article in The Star after his arrest, Bird fired “multiple shots from a rifle at the deputy, who was not hit.”
Bird was then charged with attempted first-degree murder and theft and his bond initially was set at $1 million. In the end, Bird pleaded guilty to lesser charges and was sentenced in 2016 on five counts stemming from that September 2014 incident.
With a lengthy criminal history in Kansas and Missouri , Bird was last released from the Kansas Department of Corrections in April 2023 , online records from that agency said.
Less than a year later, he was charged in Taney County, Missouri , with second-degree burglary and first-degree trespassing. He was accused of “forcibly entering an inhabitable structure” in March 2024 and “was found with gloves, a flashlight, and a knife,” court records show.
At that time, a probable cause statement describing the charges against him said he was a “danger to the community or to any other person.” The affidavit listed five of Bird’s past crimes spanning nearly 20 years.
Debate over suspect’s bond
Hours after the two Christian County deputies were killed last month, Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader took to social media and addressed concerns about Bird’s bond days before. Rader said he wanted to “put some clarification on social media posts being made about our Stone County judges after this tragic incident.”
“The suspect and his wife were on $50,000 bond,” Rader wrote the evening of Feb. 24 on his department’s Facebook page. “That is a very high bond for a ‘property crime’. Most Counties would put them on a $5000-10,000 bond or sometimes booked and released.”
Rader defended the judges in his area and said they “do an outstanding job and are absolutely not at fault.” He also pointed to changes the Missouri Supreme Court put in place in 2019 that said courts should impose the least restrictive conditions for release, while taking into account community safety and the need for defendants to show up in court.
“Calling out our Judges to resign is not the answer,” Rader posted. “High bonds were set for the charges. You can blame the MO Supreme Court or you can blame the bonding company that bonded them. At the end of the day it comes down to a deranged man that took two heroes life.”
Hundreds of people commented on and shared the sheriff’s post. Many thanked Rader for weighing in and agreed with his assessment.
“No blame except for Bird being an evil sick person,” one resident wrote. “I know our judges do what they can within the law.”
Added another: “Thank You for being a peace keeper.”
Others saw it differently.
“This guy tried to kill a sheriffs deputy in Kansas,” one woman wrote. “Why was he even able to post bond? He was charged and convicted in Kansas for shooting at a police officer. He should’ve been denied bond due to this alone, not to mention his extensive criminal past. He was a danger to the general public and a ticking time bomb … he was a career criminal.”
Another said: “Respectfully, how many felonies did the guy have? Sounds like a bond being set should never (have) happened.”
‘They would agree with’
In the petition, Drinkall described how the deputies’ deaths has impacted her Christian County community.
The “unimaginable tragedy,” she said, “has left us heartbroken and questioning the fabric of our justice system.”
She described Ramirez, who had been with the sheriff’s department for less than a year, as someone who was “always there to help his friends.” And said he “served his community both on and off duty.”
Hislope, Drinkall wrote, “was one of my closest friends.”
“He was always just a phone call away,” she said. “Now he’s gone.”
In a call with The Star, Drinkall said both deputies were dedicated law enforcement officers.
“Neither of them were the type to write you a ticket just because they could or anything like that,” she said. “Neither were the kind of law enforcement officers who just went out and tried to punish as many people for as many things as possible.”
She wants them to be remembered and Missouri’s system to change so other violent repeat offenders, like Bird, are held accountable and tragedies can be prevented. Drinkall hopes that lawmakers reach out and talk with her about the reform she and others say is needed.
“I am hearing a lot of confusion,” she said. “There are people who were confused why this person was ever let out on bond.”
The petition and reform, Drinkall said, is something she knows the two fallen deputies would have agreed with.
“Because, again, it’s very specific,” she said. “It’s very narrow to people who have this established pattern of hurting other people. And if it’s one thing, both Gabe and Mike felt very strongly against, it was people hurting other people.”
“So in my heart, I feel that this is something that they would approve of.”
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