On Wednesday afternoon at a parade celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory, a shooting killed one person and injured 22. Newton High School senior Colby Gomez was at the parade with friends.
According to USA Today, around one million people were downtown in Kansas City when the gunshots were fired.
“It was really loud, everybody was there for the parade … everybody was having fun,” senior Colby Gomez said.
Gomez recalls the delighted environment that took place before the shooting. According to the New York Times, a dispute led to the shooting.
“We started going out and after about a minute and a half, we started to hear fireworks, [or a] firecracker sound … we started seeing people spread out from a distance,” Gomez said. “We thought it had already gotten taken care of because there was a lot of police there … we saw there were people on the ground, two people getting emergency CPR, we were a little spooked.”
According to the New York Times, two teenagers have been charged for their crimes at this event. Half of the victims were under the age of 16.
“The bridge was filled with a lot of people trying to leave … they had turned around and started sprinting because there was something going on … that’s where two kids I believe had gotten arrested,” Gomez said.
Gomez described the moment and his thoughts on action at the time.
“It was like, you need to hone in on everything around you, check your surroundings, make sure you’re good, and find a place to, you know, really just settle down so you can figure out what you’re going to do … just thinking about what can we do to kind of help ourselves out and other people out in this situation,” Gomez said.
When asked if he thought security would increase in the future, Gomez said a new approach to security should be implemented.
“That would be tough … what they should do is probably have a bunch of police throughout the crowd instead of just having them surrounded … there are just so many people that it would probably be a good idea to have,” Gomez said.
