On Wednesday, Feb. 14 a mass shooting occurred at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade. Around one million people attended this parade in downtown Kansas City, MO, including several students and teachers. Business teacher Jami Hodge shared her experience of attending the parade.
“The Chiefs parade was so much fun being able to celebrate with the community and see the players walk through,” Hodge said.
This was the second year in a row that the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, so the attendance rate was very high at the parade due to it being uncommon in the NFL.
Unfortunately, there was an incident declared as a mass shooting that happened towards the end of the rally. The shooting occurred around 2 p.m. on the west side of Union Station. This has had a very strong impact on the people that attended this parade and rally.
“My first thought when the incident happened was denial,” Hodge said. “I didn’t want to believe that someone could do something like that, especially in KC. It made me very sad to know others were injured.”
Altogether, there were 39 people injured from the mass shooting. Twenty-three of those people were injured from gunfire and 18 others were injured in other ways from the parade. Unfortunately, there was one fatality, 43-year-old Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a well known DJ and a mother of two.
“As a police officer, you go into every day, you always want to kind of ‘what if’ especially if you’re working like a parade event or you’re working just a big event,” School Safety Specialist Andy Falcon said.
Hundreds of police officers were on duty at the parade, prepared for anything that could possibly go wrong. This is common for police departments to prepare for when it comes to big events.
“For most big events police departments do a really good job with setting up a briefing,” Falcon said. “They do a briefing in the morning, before everybody gets there to cover with every officer, here is your duties and responsibilities, here’s where everyone is going to be.”
Police departments all around the Kansas City Metro area did as much as they could to keep everyone safe from the incident.
“I am still very concerned and sad for our community,” Hodge said. “I am upset that a day that was supposed to be full of excitement and celebration was ruined by hate. I pray for KC.”
