Column: After Chiefs Parade Shooting, Where Do We Go From Here?
The Kansas City Chiefs did it. They went to Las Vegas, Nevada and beat the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl LVIII in dramatic fashion, all the way down to a walk-off in overtime. Marquez Valdez-Scantling and Mecole Hardman were the only Chiefs to get in the end zone. Harrison Butker was as clutch as ever, making all four of his field goals, including a Super Bowl-record 57-yarder. The defense played incredibly, just like they had all season. Patrick Mahomes led two fourth-quarter game-tying drives in the final six minutes of regulation and then led the game-winning drive in overtime. It was all spectacular.
The Chiefs obliged the request at the end of my previous article: "Win the game and bring another parade to Kansas City." It was a beautiful February day, 60 degrees and sunny without a cloud in the sky. It was a picture-perfect scene in downtown Kansas City as the double-decker buses filled with Chiefs players and personnel began down the parade route. As the parade continued down Grand Boulevard, players seemed to spend more time walking along the parade route than riding the busses, taking selfies with fans, signing autographs, and having a merry time.
Chiefs general manager Brett Veach hoisted the team's third Super Bowl trophy in five years. Patrick Mahomes gave a great speech. Chris Jones announced that he plans to finish his career in KC. Travis Kelce nearly fell off the stage while trying to parody Garth Brooks’s "Friends in Low Places." L’Jarius Sneed and Trent McDuffie declared themselves the top cornerback duo in the NFL. They all want a three-peat, and if they were to win another Super Bowl next season, they’d be the first team in NFL history to do so. The crazy thing: I wouldn’t count them out.
Yet somehow, everything above just doesn’t feel right in this moment. In one of the most joyous occasions in Kansas City sports history, celebrating the first back-to-back Super Bowl champions the NFL has seen in 20 years, and after so many counted this team out, it all feels hollow.
After the players exited the stage, there was a disturbance on the west side of Union Station where gunshots were fired. The scene went from jubilation to fear and terror in seconds. Since the aftermath of the scene, we learned that a total of 23 people were shot, including 43-year-old Johnson County resident and mother of two Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who died at the scene. Half of the shooting victims were reportedly under the age of 16. What was supposed to be a celebration turned into a tragedy. The twisted cycle of gun violence in America continues.
For me, it started at the ripe old age of 14. It was April 20, 1999. I had just finished running at a track meet and my dad was picking me up at school. He informed me there had been a school shooting in Colorado at a school called Columbine. That was my first experience feeling a sickness in my stomach when it came to hearing about kids my age being gunned down.
There isn't enough time or space in this article to cover every shooting event that occurred between then and now. Let’s fast forward to Dec. 2012, when there was a school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. My first-born daughter was three months old at the time, and I recall holding her, praying and hoping she would never have to deal with this.
A few years later, in her first year at a public school, she was in her kindergarten class where they had to practice active shooter drills. They practiced closing the blinds to the outside windows and hiding behind bookshelves to shield themselves from potential danger. One day, I received a text message and an e-mail from her school stating they had to take their knowledge of those drills and put them to real-life use as a situation escalated in the school’s neighborhood. It’s a notification you never want to see pop up on your phone.
Since then, we’ve seen shootings at Parkland High School in Florida, Robb Elementary School in Texas, The Covenant School in Tennessee, and more. We’ve seen shootings in grocery stores, churches, malls, and yes, even at last year’s NBA Championship parade in Denver, Colorado. The Chiefs' Super Bowl celebration was not even the first American sports championship parade where a shooting occurred. That’s how normal this has become, but this is not normal. Let's not make this normal. Less than a handful of people should not ruin such a joyous occasion for millions of people now or in the future. We can’t let them win.
There were so many positive memories made during this postseason run for the Chiefs and their fans. The parade and rally are the ultimate celebration between players and fans. People who would never be able to attend an NFL game are able to get close and have interactions with their favorite players — some of whom later helped protect kids who were separated from friends and family in Union Station in the midst of the chaos.
Nearly 25 years removed from the Columbine tragedy, and what have we learned? There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. So now we move on to the next thing. Free agency is just around the corner. The NFL Draft isn’t too far away. Everyone in Chiefs Kingdom wants to see the first three-peat in NFL history, and who would bet against Mahomes and company at this rate? Instead of enjoying another offseason and leading up to what could be another special season, the events that unfolded at Union Station will always be in the back of our minds. You won’t get a parade every season, but it feels like even after their next Super Bowl win, things will be a little bit different. No one is sure how that is going to look going forward.
