KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City-area DJ who was killed during a celebration of the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory was scheduled to be remembered Saturday at a funeral service attended by friends and family.
Lisa Lopez-Galvan was one of about two dozen people shot when gunfire erupted outside the city’s Union Station on February 14.
Along with her husband and young adult son, the 43-year-old had joined an estimated crowd of 1 million people at the parade and rally. As the festivities ended, a dispute over what authorities described as the belief that people in one group were staring at people in another led to gunfire.
Lopez-Galvan, a music lover who played at weddings, quinceañeras and an American Legion bar and grill, was in the thick of it. All others survived.
Two men are charged in her death, and two juveniles are charged with gun possession. Her family responded to the allegations this week with a statement thanking police and prosecutors.
“While it doesn’t bring back our beloved Lisa, it is comforting,” the statement began.
Players and celebrities alike have contacted her family. Pop superstar Taylor Swift, who regularly sits in the stands at Chiefs games because she is dating Travis Kelce, donated $100,000 to Lopez-Galvan’s family.
And because she wore a Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker jersey during the celebration, he responded to requests on social media asking for help in obtaining a similar jersey — possibly so the mother of two could rest in it.
“As the family mourns their loss and struggles with their numerous injuries, I will continue to pray for their healing and the repose of Lisa’s soul,” Butker said in a statement.
Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez worked with Lopez-Galvan at a local employment agency for about a year, but had known her since childhood. They remembered her as an outgoing and faithful Catholic who was devoted to her family, passionate about connecting job seekers with employment and ready to help anyone.
And, they said, playing music part-time allowed her to share her passion as one of the region’s few Latina DJs.
“This senseless act has taken a beautiful person from her family and this KC community,” radio station KKFI-FM, where she co-hosted a program called “Taste of Tejano,” said in a statement.
Izurieta and Ramirez said Lopez-Galvan’s roots in Kansas City run deep. Her father founded the city’s first mariachi group, Mariachi Mexico, in the 1980s, they said, and the family is well-known and active in the Latino community. Her brother, Beto Lopez, is CEO of the Guadalupe Centers, which provides community services and operates charter schools for the Latino community.
Lopez-Galvan and her two children attended Bishop Miege, a Catholic high school in a suburb on the Kansas side, and she worked there for years as a clerk at a police station.
“This is another example of a truly loving, genuine human being whose life was tragically taken by a senseless act,” Beto Lopez said in an interview last week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”