Abbi Winters spoke Saturday evening in front of the Parsons Police Department about how domestic violence impacted her life.
In May 2022, her former boyfriend shot her three times with an assault rifle outside of his residence in Kansas City before taking his own life. She has had multiple surgeries since the shooting and will have more in the future. And she has been on a mission since then to share her story and encourage people to speak out, seek help and extricate themselves from living with domestic violence.
The police department’s Domestic Violence Unit hosted Saturday’s event to honor the lives lost to domestic violence and to stand in solidarity with survivors and their families.
Parsons has had a misdemeanor and felony level domestic violence problem for years, police have said. The department’s DVU has resources available to offer more help to victims of domestic violence.
Abbi said she met Bryan States when she was in her early teens. Neither felt like they fit in at school, she said. He was quiet, funny, odd in the early going, not like anyone she’d met. He doted on her, bought her things even when his money was tight.
One red flag in the early relationship was his obsession with her and his need to control her. He would take her to his house after school. If she didn’t go, he would pinch the inside of her arm, leaving a bruise. Her dad saw the bruises and took action. At some point, the initiative dropped. Abbi said she wished that she had listened to her dad and her family early on.
“I was so stubborn. I really was.” In high school, Abbi said Bryan would not let her have friends. He controlled how she dressed. Abuse continued through their time together in and after high school, random beatings, sexual assault. At one point, after she had a son with Bryan, she thought she would never break out of her situation.
“I didn’t know the way out. So I prayed.” And she waited for an answer. The answer came on a Tuesday after Bryan beat her the night before and left her on the kitchen floor. Something told her to get out, so she called family, gathered up her son and everything she could carry and left.
She broke up with him in October 2021, eight years after getting together with him, after changing high schools to get away from him, only to have him follow her to her new school; the abuse continued there. She said her swim coach noticed bruising
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on her toward the end of her senior year.
She said when she left Bryan, that wasn’t the end.
“That was the beginning of a very hard war. Once you make that move to finally leave, you think that would be the end, right? But it’s not. It creates a war. It creates a big war. And you have to protect yourself. You have to protect your children,” Abbi said.
She said the breakup was one of the most impossible things she’s done in life.
“It felt like my soul was being ripped out of my chest. And that’s how I can explain it. It’s not a regular type of bond. It’s not a regular ‘I’m heartbroken. I’m sad.’ This is something deeper. I lost myself to love someone else. And I realized that one day. And that is not fair. I should have been loving myself the entire time since I was a little girl, so I knew that I mattered, and that I could continue to be an adult on my own,” she said.
Bryan still “hunted” her after the breakup, she said. She lost a lot of friends when she was running away from Bryan. She got a lot of tattoos. She found ways to make money for her and her son.
Abbi said Bryan had visitation with their son. When he was 5 months old, Abbi picked up her son after he visited Bryan and her son had two black eyes; she drove him to the hospital and learned her son also had a concussion. Bryan said his son fell off the bed. Abbi said no one investigated the cause of her son’s injuries.
She wished someone had stepped in then. After five months of running away from Bryan, Abbi said she met Jordan, who taught her about real love. They hold hands. Cuddle. She said he kissed her on her cheeks and forehead in appreciation. Jordan also loved her son. Jordan at one time pressed charges against Bryan after Bryan struck Abbi in a park during a child exchange.
On April 11, 2022, the complaint alleged that States committed two counts of aggravated assault, both felonies, and one count of domestic battery, a misdemeanor. He was to appear in court on May 3, 2022.
On May 2, 2022, Abbi had to pick up her son at Bryan’s house. She said she had instincts that something was wrong. She called the detective in her case. He wanted her to meet him at the courthouse. She wanted to get her son. She thought the detective was right behind her while her mom drove her to Bryan’s house. Abbi waited in the car in the passenger seat while her mom retrieved her grandchild from Bryan’s house. She was texting Jordan when she heard two gunshots. She looked over and saw Bryan standing to her right, seven feet from her. She didn’t feel the bullets strike. Bryan then looked around the scope of the gun at Abbi and fired a third round, which hit her in her face.
Bryan ran. She waited on her mom to come out with her son. Her son was fine, and her mom placed him in his car seat and drove away, calling 911 to report the shooting.
Abbi said as they drove away, they heard a fourth gunshot, within about 60 seconds, which they assumed was Bryan committing suicide. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Abbi said.
She said she eventually struggled to breathe because of her injuries but remained conscious during the ambulance ride and at the hospital.
She woke up from a coma a week or two weeks after the shooting.
Abbi said she knew what she needed to do. She needed to tell her story.
“And I needed to keep telling my story until people heard it.”
Abbi said life is difficult now. She cannot be the mom she wants because of her injuries. She’s had multiple surgeries and more are forthcoming. She said the bullets fragmented as they broke through the auto glass and spread across her body. She has gastrointestinal issues, heart issues, she had a fractured spine and still has bullet fragments throughout her body. She lost her right eye and suffered other fractures and injuries to her face.
Abbi said that when you tell someone to leave an abusive relationship, they need to be ready for what she went through. And friends and family need to be there to support that decision to leave.
Her son is now 4 but still has nightmares. She is still with Jordan, Abbi said during a question-and-answer session after her talk at the vigil.
She talked about the red flags that appeared early and continued throughout her relationship with Bryan. He was obsessed with her and needed to control her. She said he spoke to her like she was an object, like a pair of shoes. He also got “way too angry” when she spoke to other guys from school.
Abbi said she did try to get a protection from abuse order through the court, which was a grueling process. The judge issued the order, but the order didn’t extend to her son. Process servers could never find Bryan to serve him the papers, even though he lived at the same house and worked at the same job the entire time, she said.
She said she doesn’t hold grudges for the way the system failed her.
“I just hope they try better on the next case.” Abbi said a Kansas City police officer keeps her picture on his desk to remind him to keep working on domestic violence cases.
Abbi said the Parsons Police Department’s motto of “see it, hear it, report it” would have been helpful in her case.
“It definitely could have been beneficial for me a lot of times in my life if someone had seen something and said something.”
She said fathers should tell their daughters and grandfathers should tell their granddaughters that they are needed, loved and smart.
Someone who is sure of themselves would not let someone talk down to them.
“That is my advice, just love them so much,” Abbi said.
Cyprus Jones spoke briefly after Abbi. Jones is the domestic violence victim’s advocate for the police department’s DVU. She said she is working with 86 victims and survivors of domestic violence cases investigated by the DVU.
One of the people she’s working with was the next speaker, Tina, who suffered from “horrific” domestic violence during her marriage, according to a previous police release in her case. The violence ended when she walked to a neighbor’s house and asked her to call 911.
She said she has four daughters, two of them out of the home and on their own. Her husband was controlling, violent. She felt trapped. She said she was not allowed to look at men and had to be escorted to the store. Her husband got angry if she didn’t talk to him long enough.
Tina credited police Cpl. Shyanne Dunn for asking more questions on the day she went to her neighbor’s house. Tina said she lied for her husband, as she often did, because she feared he would take her girls away if she reported abuse. She feared getting in trouble.
“The last thing he told me was that he was going to slaughter all of my kids, make me watch and then kill me,” Tina said.
Tina said Cyprus has been by her side through the whole ordeal. Cyprus sat next to her in the hallway of the courthouse while her ex-husband sat and stared at her.
“If it wasn’t (for) the police department, the day he bailed out, the police department helped me board my dogs so I could go to the safehouse. It was all so quick and fast and terrifying, and they stood by me the entire way,” Tina said. She didn’t think she would have done that had Cpl. Dunn not intervened.
“I’m so proud of you,” Dunn told her at the vigil.
Tina’s husband committed suicide this summer before his criminal case was resolved.
She also talked about her husband’s controlling nature. He had a short temper. These are things one may look past when dating
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someone, but they should not be ignored and are red flags. She held a trauma bond with him. They were connected, and it didn’t matter what people would say. She lied to protect him for everything.
Cyprus said Tina was her first interview as part of the DVU and the session lasted hours. She said Tina has blossomed since she left the abusive relationship.
Police Lt. Detective Sherri McGuire then read the names of the children and adults killed from domestic violence in Parsons. Some of the perpetrators remain in prison for these crimes. Other perpetrators committed suicide after the murders.
Police Chief Robert Spinks encouraged people to continue to “see it, hear it, report it.”
After the vigil, when asked why so many domestic violence incidents involve murder in Parsons, he said Southeast Kansas does have a violence problem.
Domestic violence continues in families and authorities try to break that cycle. Because a man may consider it normal behavior to beat his girlfriend after growing up in a house where his father beat his mother.
Spinks said intervention requires resources, services, a safety net, and the DVU has put together those things to offer domestic violence victims. A grant that helped create the DVU really gave the effort to reduce domestic violence “horsepower and structure,” he said.
While domestic violence reports continue, he thinks more people are learning of the resources and help available and making more reports to get that help.
McGuire, Spinks and Jones talked to city commissioners on Oct. 2 about the advances made with the DVU.
City commissioners and City Manager Jeff Cantrell have seen the benefit of the effort and continued funding the program into 2026, when the grant ends that created the program.
McGuire told commissioners that the DVU is getting calls from law enforcement agencies across the state and from other states to find out how they could duplicate the efforts in Parsons.
The Delaware Tribe near Miami, Oklahoma, has offered to partner with the DVU. The tribe helps when local resources are lacking for victims, including shelters or vouchers to get abuse victims to their families or elsewhere.
“When someone tells me no, I call them,” Detective Sgt. Tony Adamson of the DVU said.
Spinks told commissioners that Parsons is unique in its approach. He said other states he worked in had similar programs to what Parsons does now.
“Just because we’re small. Just because we don’t roll in cash doesn’t mean that we cannot be on the cutting edge of our professional responsibilities to the community’s victims,” Spinks told commissioners.
He thanked commissioners and Cantrell for their support.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please reach out. You are not alone.
- Locally: Contact the Parsons Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit at (620) 421-7060.
- Statewide: Call the Kansas Crisis Hotline at 1-888-END-ABUSE (1-888-363-2287), available 24/7.
- Nationally: The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799SAFE (7233), or you can text START to 88788.
