KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory rally had just ended when fan Trey Filter heard what he initially thought were fireworks. Then someone shouted, “Get him!”
And that’s how the 40-year-old found himself in a widely circulated video tackling an armed person after the post-parade shooting that left one dead and nearly two dozen others injured.
“I’m not a big guy, you know, tough guy, but I saw the guy tackle what they were talking about, and I just, I just don’t know what I was thinking,” said Filter, who owns an asphalt and concrete company and lives in Maize, a suburb of Wichita, Kansas.
Police said they arrested three people but released one who they determined was not involved, leaving two youths in custody. Chief Stacey Graves acknowledged the video at a news conference and said police were working to determine if the person tackled was among those arrested.
The shooting occurred as Filter walked to his car with his wife, Casey Filter, and their 15- and 12-year-old children. Surrounded by a sea of law enforcement officers, including people with sniper rifles on the roofs, the family had felt safe. And like many in the crowd, they assumed the rapid-fire fire was a celebratory fireworks display.
But then he saw police running through the crowd and “a mess started to unfold,” he recalls.
“So then I hear: ‘Get him!’ and I look to my left, and it only lasted a second and a half, maybe two seconds. And someone ran past me and they shouted, ‘Get him!’ So I jumped.”
He knocked down the fleeing person, causing the loss of his gun. A few meters away, another bystander grabbed the person. Then Filter jumped on top of him and finally knocked him down after, as Filter put it, “breaking two tackles.”
“We were like, ‘We got him.’ I’ll always remember that,” Filter said. “And then they started shouting, ‘There’s a gun.’”
The men searched for the weapon, but did not realize it had been dislodged. Casey Filter, meanwhile, had noticed the gun fall next to her after the first failed tackle. The 39-year-old stay-at-home mom pushed it with her feet and then picked it up.
“Straight out of a video game,” is how Trey Filter remembered the long-barreled weapon.
Filter also said he punched the person they tackled before police pulled him away.
When it was all over, he grabbed his hat and they walked to the car. He remembered receiving congratulations from “attaboys” along the way, but he didn’t think much of it: “I felt like I’d just had a fight.”
But then they were greeted by local media when they got home. By then, the video spread far and wide.
“It still hasn’t been processed,” Trey Filter said. “We barely let the dogs out when we got home.”
What strikes Casey Filter is how quickly everything changed. The weather was beautiful, she recalled, the fans friendly.
“It was a party until it wasn’t,” she said.
A petition circulating online calls for her husband and the other bystander to receive Super Bowl rings. Trey Filter laughed at the idea.
“I’m sure there were a thousand other men who would have done it,” he said. “We, like everyone else, are only hearing about this as it unfolds.”