Food trucks gather at funeral home to honor late food truck operator

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Food trucks were serving up soul food and other delicacies Thursday, August 15 in the parking lot of Marcom Harvey Funeral Care .

Keshia Clark, owner of KC’s Wing Bar, has worked many events alongside the food truck Chicken Mac N’ Cheese and Dyamund “DJ” Shields Jr., 31. She wasn’t there in the early morning hours on Prospect Monday, August 5 when gunfire rang out within yards of the former family restaurant Shields grew up in.

“That was difficult to see, difficult to think about, because we are always doing a lot of different events together,” said Clark.

“So it was very difficult to know that something like that could happen to him while doing something that he cares about, doing what we all care about doing, that could have been any of us.”

Thursday, as friends and loved ones filed into the Marcom Harvey Funeral Home to pay their respects wearing their Chicken Mac N’ Cheese shirts, Clark was in the parking lot with other food trucks.

“It’s been such a great celebration of DJ’s life, everyone has come together in solidarity. We have the food trucks here, we have family, we have friends, we just have members of the community that are just coming together to celebrate DJ,” Aesha Humphrey said.

“It’s a good way to bring neighborhoods and families together we know that God takes good out of bad,” Diane McQuarters said.

While, sadly, the shooting that injured seven was not the first shooting at a crowded Kansas City event this year, food truck operators in attendance seemed determined to carry on doing what Shields loved to do, serve the community.

“We don’t know when our time is. I’m not going to say that I’m not going to operate because of things like that. You just try to be more safe. You try to choose locations that are a little bit more safe,” Clark said.

In front of the food trucks that helped celebrate Shields’s life and legacy, friends and loved ones closed the evening by joining hands in prayer.

10 percent of the proceeds from food truck sales went to Shields’ three children including a baby, Dyamund Shields III.

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