ROAD RAGE ALLEGED IN DEATH OF LOCAL JOURNALIST
Probable cause has been found and the defendant has been bound over to Division 6 of Platte County Circuit Court for further proceedings.
That was the result of a preliminary hearing held June 18 for the man charged with killing a local journalist in a highway shooting in January of 2025.
Ruslan Huseynov, 35, most recently of Kansas City in Jackson County but originally from the country of Azerbaijan, continues to be held without bond in the Platte County Jail.
The next hearing in his case is now scheduled for Wednesday, July 1 at 1 p.m. Huseynov, who is being represented by a public defender, was expected to request a bond modification at that hearing.
Huseynov is charged with second degree murder, unlawful use of a weapon and two counts of armed criminal action in the shooting of Dennis Sharkey. Sharkey, age 50 of Liberty, a veteran journalist who was working as a sports reporter for the Platte County Citizen at the time of his death, was shot to death Jan. 10, 2025 on Interstate 29 near 72nd St. Authorities believe it to be a case of road rage.
Sharkey had previously worked for other area newspapers, including The Landmark in 2009-2010. Some of his other stints included time with the Oskaloosa Independent in Oskaloosa, Kan., the Mound City (Mo) News and the Mexico (Mo.) Ledger.
The process of holding a preliminary hearing for Huseynov had long been held up while authorities located an interpreter. Authorities say Huseynov speaks the dialect of southern Azerbaijani.
An interpreter was finally found in California and assisted in the preliminary hearing remotely.
Quint Shafer was the judge in Huseynov’s preliminary hearing last week. Platte County Circuit Court Judge Myles Perry presides over Division 6, to where the case has now advanced for further proceedings.
Huseynov was employed at Worlds Liquors in Platte City.
According to the statement of probable cause filed by prosecutors in the case, authorities received a 911 phone call on Jan. 10, 2025 shortly after 7 p.m. related to a shooting on I-29. The call came from a couple who had been traveling southbound between Barry Road and NW 72nd Street. The couple saw a dark-colored car, later identified as the suspect vehicle, followed by a white car, later identified as a 2019 Chevrolet Spark, which was driven by Sharkey.
The witnesses said that the two cars came to a stop in the far right lane of I-29, requiring the vehicle in which the couple were traveling to also stop. As the couple pulled around the stopped cars, the driver of the dark colored car got out of his vehicle with a gun in his hand and pointed at the victim’s car. As the couple accelerated from the scene, they heard a gunshot, according to court documents.
Platte County Sheriff Erik Holland told The Landmark last year at the time of Huseynov’s arrest that the suspect got out of his vehicle, and Sharkey then attempted to go around the suspect’s vehicle on the left. That’s when a single shot was fired into Sharkey’s vehicle, the sheriff said.
One of the witnesses described the suspect as a male of possible Italian or Middle Eastern descent, according to court documents.
Holland said after the shot was fired north of the 72nd St. exit, Sharkey’s car traveled a short distance before leaving the right side of the roadway just south of the 72nd St. exit. Sharkey’s vehicle traveled down an embankment and came to rest near the barrier fence along NW Prairie View Road at about 70th St.
Emergency workers found Sharkey in the vehicle unresponsive with what appeared to be a gunshot wound. Sharkey was taken to North Kansas City Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy revealed the preliminary cause of death to be a single gunshot wound.
According to court documents, a canine belonging to the ATF discovered a recently expended single 9 mm shell casing on I-29, north of NW 72nd Street.
Authorities say Sharkey’s cell phone was recovered from his vehicle. A search warrant related to data from the phone showed the phone communicating at 6:57:50 p.m. on the night of the shooting with the cell phone tower near 6600 NW Tower Drive at 6:57:50, which is located about 950 meters from where the shell casing was found.
A search warrant for other cellular signals traveling southbound at the same time revealed a cell phone allegedly belonging to Huseynov traveling southbound on I-29 and communicating with the cell phone tower on NW Tower Drive at 6:57:43 p.m. on the night of the shooting.
Court documents indicate that phone spent 62 seconds on I-29 in a space of 900 meters, leading investigators to determine Huseynov’s phone was in a vehicle that stopped on I-29 at the time of the shooting.
According to court documents, investigators also reviewed surveillance footage documenting what the eyewitness couple reported.
On June 10 of last year, authorities interviewed Huseynov. According to court documents, he allegedly confirmed his cell phone number and denied owning a gun. When presented with an image from his own phone’s cloud showing him holding a 9 mm magazine, loaded, he admitted it was his hand in the photo, but claimed the gun belonged to a friend, whose name he could not recall, who attempted to sell him the gun.
A search warrant was executed at his residence, and authorities located a 9 mm Stoeger pistol in a safe in his bedroom. Court documents state that testing by the Kansas City Police Crime Laboratory confirmed that the shell casing located at the scene of the crime and the bullet removed from Sharkey’s body during the autopsy were identified and verified to test fires performed on the pistol recovered from Huseynov’s bedroom.
