KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Authorities in Kansas City said Thursday that the mass shooting that left one person dead and 22 injured unfolded amid throngs of people at the Chiefs‘ Super Bowl celebration, appeared to stem from a dispute between several people.
Graves said Thursday the total number of victims is 23, including Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was killed in the shooting.
Police Chief Stacey Graves said the 22 people injured in the shooting ranged between the ages of eight and 47 years old, and half of the 22 injured people who were treated Wednesday were under the age of 16.
Fire Chief Ross Grundyson said the victims included eight critically hurt and seven in serious condition.
Three people were detained — two of which are juveniles — and firearms were recovered during the mayhem, police said. But investigators are calling for witnesses, people with cellphone footage and victims of the violence to call a dedicated hotline.
“We are working to determine the involvement of others. And it should be noted we have recovered several firearms. This incident is still a very active investigation,” Graves said at a news conference.
The shooting outside Union Station occurred despite the presence of more than 800 police officers who were in the building and nearby, including on top of nearby structures, said Mayor Quinton Lucas, who attended with his wife and mother and ran for safety when the shots rang out.
Throngs had lined the parade route before the shooting, with fans climbing trees and street poles or standing on rooftops for a better view. Players rolled through the crowd on double-decker buses, as DJs and drummers heralded their arrival.
It’s unclear exactly how many people attended the Chief’s Super Bowl parade. When the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 2015, an estimated 800,000 people had flocked to that victory parade, shattering expectations in a city with a population of about 470,000 and a metropolitan area of about 2 million.
Witnesses described confusion as gunshots began, sounding to some like fireworks.
Some people didn’t run at first, but others immediately scrambled for cover. The rally music initially continued playing despite the havoc. And then, within moments of the shooting stopping, some people were walking as if nothing happened.
Social media users posted shocking video of police running through Wednesday’s crowded scene as people scrambled for cover and fled. One video showed someone apparently performing chest compressions on a victim as another person, seemingly 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. In an interview Thursday with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trey Filter of Wichita, Kansas, said he saw someone being chased and took action.
“I couldn’t see much. I heard, ‘Get ’em!’ I saw a flash next to me. And I remember I jumped and remember thinking, ‘I hope this is the fool they were talking about,'” he said. “They started yelling that, ‘There’s a gun! There’s a gun!'”
Filter said he and another man kept the person pinned down until officers arrived. “I remember the officers pulling my feet off of him and at that point I was just looking for my wife and kids,” he said.
It was not immediately clear if the person he held down was involved in the shooting, but Filter’s wife, Casey, saw a gun nearby and picked it up.
The woman killed in the shooting was identified Wednesday by radio station KKFI-FM as Lopez-Galvan, host of “Taste of Tejano.”
Lopez-Galvan, whose DJ name was “Lisa G,” was an extrovert and devoted mother from a prominent Latino family in the area, said Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez, two childhood friends who worked with her at a staffing company.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.