By Rajika Chauhan
Staff Writer
The homecoming celebration of a winning team after any major sporting event is reason for great pride and national attention, giving both fans and players an opportunity to revel in their victory after a season’s worth of trials and tests of faith. To see places of such joy marred, with the Super Bowl Parade of the reigning Kansas City Chiefs descending into bloodshed on Feb. 14, is a reminder of the ubiquity of the issue of gun violence in America.
According to the New York Times, the celebration proceeded with a tour through Kansas City’s downtown and culminated in a rally by Union Station, a major transportation hub for the city. Shots were fired by the west side of the station soon after the rally’s conclusion, inciting immediate chaos within the crowd of thousands who had gathered for the day’s events. According to NYT, many attendees reported mistaking the gunshots for fireworks, and in the tumult that erupted during the violence, survivors were shaken by the threat of crowd crush and trampling.
Chief Stacy Graves of the Kansas City Police stated on Feb. 15 that “there was no nexus to terrorism or homegrown violent extremism.”
Authorities pursued the suspects on foot immediately after shots were fired, with two teenagers arrested and charged on Feb. 16. According to ABC News, the shootings left one dead and 22 injured, among the wounded being nine children. Graves reported the victims ranging in age from 8 to 47, with half being under 16 years old. The Children’s Mercy Hospital treated 11 children between ages 6 and 15, none of whom were in critical condition.
43-year-old Elizabeth Galvan, a DJ and local radio host, was killed in the shootings. Her friend Lisa Lopez said in a statement to the Kansas City Star, “She was the life of the party…Our Hispanic community lost a beautiful, wonderful person.”
The two teenage suspects have not yet been publicly identified, and are being held in custody as they await trial. Steps are being taken to have them tried as adults, although the judicial process could take weeks to be resolved. According to the NYT, Missouri law dictates that most juveniles in Missouri are to be released to their parents or guardians after being detained, unless charged with serious crimes such as handling a weapon. Prosecutors must work with a juvenile officer rather than filing charges directly to the court.
There has been no evidence that the shooting was the product of a purposeful attack on the parade. It is believed that the shooting arose out of a dispute between the two juveniles, which eventually escalated into armed violence. It is the unfortunate repetition of a pattern that has become all too common in Kansas City, which has one of the highest murder rates in the nation.
The NYT reports that 182 people were killed last year, with many of the deaths being linked back to personal disputes between individuals that turned violent.
The incident in Kansas City appears to be a symptom of a larger epidemic of gun violence amongst the youth of America. The frequency of shootings involving a person younger than 18 killing another child has been rising over time, and gun violence in 2020 became the leading cause of death for children and teenagers, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
As Kansas City mourns, America has added yet another tally to its count of mass shootings for this year. While the aftermath of this latest tragedy will continue to play out, citizens and officials alike are still trying to make sense of the forces that have underwritten it, in an effort to prevent them from striking again.
