‘Are my friends dead or not?’ Witnesses describe
scenes of panic at deadly Kansas city shooting
Fans said they were almost trampled as they tried to
escape the carnage at the Super Bowl parade, while others reportedly helped
tackle a suspected shooter
Kansas
Super Bowl shooting – what we know so far
Helen
Livingstone and agencies
Wed 14 Feb
2024 22.23 EST
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 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.
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
underway 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.”
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
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