GRANDVIEW, Mo. — Resettling their lives in the United States was supposed to be the move that make Saif Mahdi and his wife Noora Ghanim’s lives safer.

“It’s very difficult to not hearing her voice [in the] morning, or before I go to sleep,” Mahdi said.

They met in the mid 2000’s in a warzone, working for the United States Army gathering and interpreting news reports from Arabic to English. That work eventually made them targets.

“We start getting calls a lot, threatening us, they burn my car and at this time, she was pregnant,” Mahdi said.

Mahdi said Ghanim eventually miscarried.

“After that, we decided just to move on because it’s not safe for us,” Mahdi said.

A long, chaotic journey, escaping terrorists and navigating immigration red tap eventually landed in Kansas City around 2016, where Noora thrived professionally and they made a new life.

“She told me, ‘I like Kansas City, I want to live and die in Kansas City,” Mahdi said, tearing up. “Our plan was to raise our kids and then move to Smithville to buy a small house with farm, and after the kids are off to college, they can come with their families.”

That dream ended on Christmas Eve 2023 while Saif and Noora were driving on I-49.

“When it happened, I looked in my mirror, I found two cars and four cars in front of me and smack he came to me and the accident happened,” Mahdi said. “So it’s a microsecond.”

Saif’s beloved Noora was gone.

Court documents say Kenneth B Paul Jr. had a Blood Alcohol Concentration that was twice the legal limit when he was driving the car that hit Mahdi and Ghanim. He had been going south in the Northbound lanes for roughly seven miles before he hit Mahdi’s car.

A Police Officer on the scene said that he heard Paul slurrily say, “I did this. I caused all of this,” on his way to the ambulance. Prosecutors charged Paul with a felony for driving while intoxicated and killing someone and the court issued an arrest warrant soon after.

But that’s where the court documents stop.

More than a year after the crash, the criminal case has stalled because law enforcement hasn’t been able to find Kenneth Paul Jr.

“It’s just irritating,” said Grandview Police Master Sergeant Brandon Grantham. “It’s aggravating for us.”

FOX4 visited his Kansas City, Missouri address and when no one answered the door, neighbors told us they hadn’t seen Paul in a while.

KCPD and Grandview Police tell FOX4 they’ve been to the residence a few times since the arrest warrant was filed, even observing the house a few times over the summer but never finding or arresting Paul.

“Somebody’s seen him, somebody has friends with him,” said Grantham. “At this point, when he knows he has the warrant, he’s hiding and that’s not a good life.”

KCPD tells FOX4 that its fugitive apprehension team generally only focuses on violent offenders, but Paul could still be arrested if he has another police interaction, and the officer runs his information through law enforcement databases. Grantham tells FOX4 any officer across the United States would get an alert with Paul’s name.

“We’re at the very final stages of what the police can do and we just can’t get over this last step,” Grantham said. “It really is heartbreaking.”

Personal injury attorney Nick Hergott says that’s where cases like this often end up.

“We’re really faced with an overburdened criminal justice and civil justice system,” Hergott said. “I think that you get a backlog and they have to start triaging [cases] and that leads to some very unfortunate and unfair circumstances where the community feels that it’s not being protected.”

When the criminal justice system grinds to a halt, victims and survivors can also try to be made whole through the civil courts, where Hergott and Mahdi point out that an additional obstacle can be insurance caps.

“The only amount of money that will be paid in a case like this is generally going to be related to the driver’s insurance limits,” Hergott said. “Those are set by what you purchase from your insurance carrier and the state minimum in both Kansas and Missouri is $25,000. So there are a lot of drivers that are driving around no matter how bad they hit you, that’s the most their insurance company is going to pay you. If you’ve ever been to the hospital before, that goes quickly. It doesn’t make up for a loss like this.”

Mahdi said he’s ready to help investigators however he can but a year after losing his wife and raising their sons as a single father, whatever happens next, he says, is in her memory.

“Her impact is still inside us, motivating us,” Mahdi said. “And I’m just trying to do by this to make her dream to be true.

The Grandview Police Department is still looking for Kenneth Paul. If you have any information, you can call: (816) 316-4985.