Witnesses have spoken of their horror and desperation after gunshots rang out at Kansas City’s Super Bowl victory rally, sparking panic among the tens of thousands who had turned out to celebrate.
“The security guard was like: ‘Get over the damn fence right now, there’s a shooter,’” Gabe Wallace, a student, told the Kansas City Star newspaper. “When I was hopping over the barricade, my foot hit and my face nailed the concrete.”
Shortly afterwards he stood with a friend near Union Station with a large scrape on his face. “I have no idea if my friends are OK,” he told the paper. “It’s terrible … I’m literally thinking, most of my friends are dead. That’s all that went through my mind, is like, ‘Are my friends dead or not?’”
One person, identified in local media as the local DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan by friends of her family, has since been confirmed dead and 21 injured, including eight children hospitalised with gunshot wounds.
Social media users posted video of police running through a crowded scene as people fled. One video showed someone apparently performing chest compressions on a shooting victim as another person, apparently writhing in pain, lay on the ground nearby. People screamed in the background.
Another video showed two people chase and tackle a person, holding them down until two police officers arrived.
Breaking Video of Heroic Kansas City fans tackling one of the shooters pic.twitter.com/cAxL9Kox8d
— Fantasy Fanatics (@FFB_Fanatics) February 14, 2024
Paul Contreras, who was reportedly among those who tackled the suspected shooter, told KETV NewsWatch 7 that he saw a gun fall out of the alleged shooter’s hand as he and another bystander tackled him.
“You can’t be scared, you know. Not saying you want it to happen, but there’s always that chance. It could happen at work, the grocery store. This just happened to be the Super Bowl parade,” he said.
“The whole time he’s fighting to get up and run away,” Paul said. “We’re fighting each other, you know. We’re fighting to keep him down and he’s fighting to get up.”
Lisa Money, a Kansas resident, was trying to gather some confetti near the end of the parade when she heard somebody yell, “Down, down, everybody down!”
At first Money thought somebody might be joking until she saw the Swat team jumping over the fence.
“I can’t believe it really happened. Who in their right mind would do something like this? This is supposed to be a day of celebration for everybody in the city and the surrounding area and then you’ve got some idiot that wants to come along and do something like this,” she said.
At first, the shots sounded like fireworks, Ian Johnson, who had been selling hot dogs near the main event stage, told the New York Times. He realised a shooting was under way only when fans started running, including some who sheltered under his hot dog tent.
Courtney Brown and her two sons were also near the stage when the shooting began. She told her children to keep moving. “We were almost trampled twice,” she said. The three of them locked arms and huddled near a barricade until the crush of the crowd had eased.
The city’s mayor, Quinton Lucas, who was at the event with his wife and mother, said he was very upset by what had happened and praised law enforcement for running towards the danger.
“I’m as heartbroken as anybody,” he added at a news conference. “When you have people who decide to bring guns to events ... all of us start to be members of this club that none of us wants to be a part of, people who have been part of a mass shooting.”
The Kansas City police chief, Stacey Graves, said three people had been taken into custody. She said she has heard that fans may have been involved in apprehending a suspect but could not immediately confirm that.
“I’m angry at what happened today. The people who came to this celebration should expect a safe environment.” Graves said. She did not give any further details about the suspects or their motive. She said firearms had been recovered, but not what kind of weapons were used.
Associated Press contributed to this report
