Man sentenced in 2017 killing of 18-year-old Topeka woman

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 2017 killing of an 18-year-old Topeka woman. Twenty-year-old Javon Amond Smith was sentenced Thursday for second-degree murder and other crimes linked to the death of Kianna Cherise Hodges. Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay said Topeka police were called on March 4, 2017, after a man on foot shot into two separate vehicles, killing Hodges and wounding four other people. New information emerged during a cold case review in 2020, leading to Smith’s arrest. Smith pleaded guilty in October to second-degree murder and criminal discharge of a weapon into an occupied vehicle.