KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Less than a day after a mass shooting broke out minutes after the the Chiefs Kingdom Champions Victory Parade rally concluded Wedneday, KSHB 41 reporter Claire Bradshaw sat down with Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas Thursday morning.
One person was killed and 21 others were injured in the shooting.
LINK | Complete KSHB 41 coverage of Union Station shooting
Lucas said the public should be provided with more updates Thursday as official information from Wednesday's press conferences still stands: three suspects are detained for questioning, there is no probable threat to the public, an investigation into what happened and a motive continues, and efforts to officially deliver charges to prosecutors is ongoing.
"I'm doing fine compared, I know, to other people who are dealing with very serious tragedies today," Lucas said. "My heart goes out to the Lopez-Galvan family, others who were injured, people who brought their children to a parade and didn't expect that they'd all be in a hospital this morning. So, it was certainly an incident I never want to go through again, had my family there with me, but I'm doing alright."
Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a radio DJ for local KKFI, was identified Wednesday as the sole fatality of the shooting.
Lucas said he began to notice something was off when he saw police officers remove Chiefs players from the Chiefs Kingdom Champions Victory Parade rally stage.
"And then a security person comes kind of hurriedly to me and says, 'We need to go inside Union Station,'" he said. "We're in there for a little while, you hear sounds, sounds like rapid fire, gunshots, not the type of thing from a revolver or a .38, but something that sounds like a weapon that could do harm, and real harm, and then people start running. And I see football players, and children, and concerned families, people of every background seemingly running for their lives, and I joined the group."
Lucas said he went outside and became separated from his wife and mother, which he described as a "harrowing amount of time."
"I imagine the 500,000 people who were probably out there at the rally location, at least, all of them have that story, and one thing that was particularly kind of trying for me — and I didn't sleep much last night — was while running, I saw this like 9-year-old, and the saddest part is, he seemed to know what to do better than the rest of us," Lucas said. "You know, I'm only 39 years-old, but I did not grow up in a Kansas City where we needed to do active shooter drills, or frankly, things like this happen. And I lived in some of the city's toughest neighborhoods when I was growing up as a kid, and frankly, as an adult. But, you know, this is different. And, this is the sort of thing that I'm just so horrified that more people know about, and that we're forced to get used to."
KSHB 41 reporter Claire Bradshaw referred to KCPD Chief Stacey Graves' Wednesday statement when she said, "This is not Kansas City," when she asked Lucas how this violence compares to other violence in Kansas City as 2023 was the city's deadliest year on record.
"First of all, I'll stand by (Chief Stacey Graves') statement before, like I just said, I grew up in some of Kansas City's most challenged neighborhoods, that being said, the thing about growing up in a neighborhood with challenges, usually if you were staying out of trouble, the trouble didn't come to you," Lucas said. "So, this is actually rather different. This is something where a bunch of people are at a parade; they're not buying drugs, they're not selling drugs, they're not subject to retaliation."
Lucas apologized to "so many people" when he said the city spent millions, had over 800 law enforcement officers present at the parade and rally, and that "we still weren't safe."
"We let down a lot of people, my family included," Lucas said. "And, I think we'll continue to try to do more, 30% pay raise increase for police officers, any number of things, but when a fool can show up at a rally with a gun, and one that can fire pretty rapidly, then I don't know if we'll ever be able to be fully safe from all of this."
—
