An ecstatic Super Bowl rally, upended by the terror of a mass shooting. How is Kansas City faring?
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — “Are you feeling good today, Chiefs Kingdom?” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas shouted to a sea of fans fresh off their city’s third Super Bowl victory in five years .
Less than an hour later — with the music still blaring and celebratory confetti still hanging in the air — the mayor and a crowd of others fled the gunfire, unsure where it came from, desperate for safety.
At its highest moment of community pride, Kansas City experienced one of the most traumatic events of 21st-century American culture: a public mass shooting. By the time it was over, one woman was dead and nearly twenty other people were injured.
The police now point to an argument between several people. On Friday, authorities said two juveniles were charged with gun-related conduct and resisting arrest. Additional charges are expected.
Wednesday’s shootings lasted only moments, their immediate aftermath only a few hours. But in its aftermath, the event left a reeling community struggling to understand how something so positive could so quickly turn into something so terrifying and sad.
As the mayor later said, “This is absolutely a tragedy, a tragedy we never expected in Kansas City, and a tragedy we will remember for some time.”
The relationship between local fans and their sports teams is often intense. And nowhere more so than at this particular moment in this particular city’s history, where talent, luck, success and civic pride merged into an enthusiastic cocktail – a cocktail that got Wednesday’s festivities started on an upbeat and light-hearted note.
For many young fans, the main question was whether Taylor Swift would join her toned boyfriend Travis Kelce for the Valentine’s Day festivities. Fans and tabloids breathlessly followed the path of her plane, revealing that it had landed in Melbourne, Australia, where she had a concert planned. That meant she was absent as red double-decker buses rolled along the 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) parade route
No one seemed to mind. There was plenty to do for fun. With many school districts canceling classes, children were among the crowds begging for autographs and exchanging high-fives with their favorite players. Some Chiefs wore ski goggles to protect themselves from champagne showers.
The city and its leaders beamed at being on the world stage, eager to celebrate the Chiefs’ come-from-behind 25-22 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers.
“All over the world,” team owner Clark Hunt said at the rally, “they know about this amazing place.”
And Missouri Governor Mike Parson addressed the crowd, chiding those who dismiss the state as merely “flyover country”: “If you want to see the Lombardi Trophy, you have to fly to Kansas City. , Missouri, and we’ll show you more trophies.”
Nearly every speech was filled with talk about taking home the trophy again next season for the third time in a row. The bravado was stunning from a team that, until 2020, had not won a Super Bowl since 1969.
And the city had embraced the turnaround, T-shirts flying off the shelves and fireworks erupting in the neighborhoods after each playoff victory. Schools and companies celebrated ‘Red Friday’ en masse throughout the season.
“Three times. First time in NFL history. We do it. I love you all,†quarterback Patrick Mahomes vowed. “Three-peat!” the crowd shouted in response.
As the gathering waned, Kelce grabbed the microphone and began singing his own version of country singer Garth Brooks’ old standard, “Friends in Low Places.” It was a swipe at analysts who had written off the Chiefs, who were hardly dominant. during the regular season and had entered the playoffs as the AFC’s No. 3 seed.
“We were the last ones they thought we’d see there,” Kelce sang as the crowd joined in. Some had climbed trees to watch.
Then: As the red sea slowly spread, a sound was heard. “Pop. Pop. Dad,†one witness recalled. Gunshots. But from where?
Some fans ran away. Others stayed put, thinking they heard fireworks. Officers rushed to the scene of the accident with their weapons drawn. Two fans even tackled an armed person. As ambulance sirens blared and helicopters flew overhead, police cordoned off the assembly area with tape.
“I can see it now, the headline: ‘Dark Day,’” said Gene Hamilton, a 61-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, as he waited behind the band.
What he couldn’t get out of his head was the music. It continued to play as people ran and he made plans to kneel behind a stone wall if necessary. ‘Change the music,’ he remembered thinking.
Hana Lee, 28, had been walking to a bus when she heard gunshots and people shouting, “Get down, get down.” She saw two people on the ground and joined the pushing, pushing crowd.
“How,” she asked, “can anything go from this happy to this?”
Everyone seemed to know someone who was there; that’s the kind of city Kansas City is. Those present were bombarded with text messages: Where are you? Are you safe?
“Just thought I’d stop by after this holiday turned into a tragedy,” Sarah Fox of Prairie Village, just across the state line in Kansas, texted members of her book club.
Police Chief Stacey Graves said the parade likely drew 1 million people in a city of about 508,000 residents and a metropolitan area of about 2.2 million. The shootings, she said, do not reflect the community she knows.
“This isn’t Kansas City,” said Graves, who had stationed about 600 of her officers along the route, along with another 200 from other agencies. “I am angry about what happened.”
Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a mother and popular disc jockey, died. Many of the 22 injured were children. School districts that canceled classes offered guidance, as did churches.
“It started with so much joy and anticipation and ended with tragedy and pain that none of us could have anticipated,” said Michelle Hubbard, the superintendent of one of the largest school districts in Kansas, Shawnee Mission.
One district student was even comforted by Chiefs coach Andy Reid amid the chaos, and Hubbard emphasized the importance of the community’s interconnectedness. “In the coming days,†she said, “we will need to lean on that unity, and on each other.â€
In one way, in Kansas City, the sense of community that the Super Bowl championship brought earlier this week has faded into the sense of community that tragedy can create — unity with a different flavor, but just as powerful. You could see the beginnings of that in the immediate aftermath of the violence, where there were no strangers in the chaos.
Ashley Coderre, a 36-year-old from Overland Park, Kansas, encountered a shocked father amid the gunfire, fled with him and his child and crouched behind a car with them. As she retold it, a truck rolled over a glass beer bottle, a remnant from the earlier celebration, and shattered it. Coderre jumped. “Oh,” she said, “that’s not okay right now.”
She eventually stopped behind a fire truck to regroup. There she met Allie Tipton, 30, of St. Louis, who was far from her car and all alone. Tipton also fled after hearing the gunshots and helped a terrified woman find her missing child. With the aftermath swirling around her, she didn’t know what to do. Coderre, a stranger, was there.
Tipton said of her new friend: “We had a traumatic bond.”