Police: Dispute may have led to parade shooting
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The mass shooting that unfolded amid throngs of people at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration, killing one person and wounding almost two dozen others, appeared to stem from a dispute between several people, authorities said Thursday.
Police Chief Stacey Graves said the 22 people injured Wednesday ranged between 8 and 47, with half under 16. A mother of two was killed.
Police said they detained three people from the shooting but released one person they determined wasn’t involved, leaving two juveniles in custody. No charges have been filed. Police are looking for others who may have been involved and 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 area, including on top of nearby structures, said Mayor Quinton Lucas, who attended with his wife and mother and ran for safety when the shots were fired. But he doesn’t expect to cancel the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day parade.
“We have parades all the time. I don’t think they’ll end. Certainly we recognized the public safety challenges and issues that relate to them,” Lucas said.
Wednesday’s celebration was the third such parade in four years, and the others had no violence.
People packed the parade route, with fans climbing trees and street poles for a better view. Players rolled through on double-decker buses as DJs and drummers heralded their arrival.
The police chief said 1 million people likely attended the parade, which occurred in a city of about 470,000 people and a metropolitan area of about 2 million, but stressed the violence was wrought by just a handful of people.
“The law enforcement response was exemplary. Those in attendance also responded,” Graves added.
Among them was Trey Filter, who was walking to the car with his family when he heard yells of “get him.”
Filter, 40, saw a fleeing man, prompting him and another bystander to try to tackle him. Filter eventually jumped on top of the man. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking,” the owner of an asphalt and concrete company recalled. “We was like, ‘We got him.’ I’ll always remember that. And then they started screaming, ‘There’s a gun!’ ”
The men looked for it, realizing it had been knocked loose. The gun had fallen near Filter’s wife, Casey Filter, who picked it up. At that point, the man who fled was under a dogpile about 10 feet away.
Trey Filter, who lives outside Wichita, was still processing the melee Thursday. But he was glad there wasn’t more carnage.
“I’m sure there were a thousand other men there that would have done it,” he said.
Police didn’t identify Filter as a man who intervened or specifically say whether the man he tackled was a suspect.
The rally had just ended and music was still blaring when the shots erupted. Many people initially thought they were hearing fireworks. But then chaos ensued. Some in the crowd hit the ground while others leapt over barriers and sprinted, some carrying children in their arms.
The crowd was so massive normalcy returned quickly, with
some fans unsure what had happened. But then ambulances arrived, and officers rushed in with guns drawn. Some of the less-seriously injured were driven away on golf carts.
The stunned crowd — some in tears — slowly gathered their belongings, trying to figure out how to get home. Strangers comforted each other as police put up crime scene tape in an area where moments earlier there had been a joyous celebration.