On February 14, 2024 — Valentine’s Day — a mass shooting broke out among the dispersing crowd at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl LVIII victory parade and rally at Union Station. One person was killed: Lisa Lopez-Galvan, 43, a DJ at KKFI 90.1 FM community radio and co-host of A Taste of Tejano. Twenty-two others were wounded, including approximately eleven children. Investigators determined the shooting originated in a personal dispute between rival groups in the crowd, not a planned attack on the event. It was the deadliest mass shooting at a US sports championship celebration on record.
The parade
The Kansas City Chiefs had won Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, 2024, defeating the San Francisco 49ers 25–22 in overtime at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas — the franchise’s third championship and second consecutive title. The city scheduled the victory parade for February 14, three days later.
The parade route ran from the Power & Light District south on Grand Boulevard through downtown, turning west on Pershing Road and concluding at Union Station, where a rally stage was erected on the south lawn facing the Liberty Memorial across Pershing Road. Crowd estimates put attendance at approximately one million people along the route and at the rally site, making it one of the largest single-day civic gatherings in Kansas City history.
The rally proceeded without incident. Speeches from the stage included head coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce, and owner Clark Hunt. The formal program concluded at approximately 1:45 p.m.
The shooting
As the crowd began dispersing, gunfire broke out at approximately 2:00 p.m. on the west side of Union Station, in the pedestrian-circulation and parking area where thousands of attendees were exiting toward transit and vehicles.
Witness accounts and subsequent police investigation established that the shooting originated in a verbal dispute between rival groups in the crowd. The confrontation escalated rapidly from argument to physical altercation to drawn firearms. Multiple individuals fired weapons. A bystander physically tackled one of the suspected shooters during the gunfire — an act that drew widespread public attention in the days that followed.
Kansas City Police and pre-staged emergency medical personnel responded immediately and treated the wounded at the scene before transport to nearby hospitals including University Health, Children’s Mercy Hospital, and Saint Luke’s Hospital.
Lisa Lopez-Galvan
Lisa Lopez-Galvan, 43, of Shawnee, Kansas, was the only fatality of the shooting. She was shot near the west side of Union Station and died at the scene.
Lopez-Galvan was a mother of two and a fixture in Kansas City’s Mexican-American and community-radio communities. She had worked as a bilingual private DJ for more than fifteen years. In March 2022 she became co-host of A Taste of Tejano, a weekly program on KKFI 90.1 FM airing Tuesday evenings focused on Tejano and Mexican-American music. She was widely known in KC music and community circles as DJ “Lisa G.”
She had attended the parade with her husband, son, and daughter.
KKFI 90.1 FM held tribute programming for Lopez-Galvan in the days and weeks following the shooting. The community response was extensive: vigils were held across Kansas City, her funeral drew large crowds, and fundraising on behalf of her family — and for the broader group of wounded — exceeded seven figures within weeks.
Response and investigation
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas was present at the rally when the shooting occurred. He was uninjured and issued the first official municipal response the evening of February 14. No players, coaches, or Chiefs organization staff were injured.
Three adult suspects were charged. Lyndell Mays, 25, was identified by police as the individual who drew and fired first after a dispute over eye contact with a group he had no prior history with. Mays was charged with second-degree murder, armed criminal action, unlawful use of a weapon, and causing a catastrophe; his trial is scheduled for March 2027. Dominic Miller — who told police he returned fire after hearing shots directed at him — and Terry Young each had their second-degree murder charges dropped under Missouri’s stand-your-ground law. Both pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a weapon and were sentenced to two years in prison in spring 2026; both were subsequently released. Two juveniles were also charged in juvenile court on gun-related and resisting-arrest counts.
President Joe Biden issued a statement on the evening of February 14 calling for gun-violence action. Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Andy Reid, and the Hunt family ownership issued statements of grief and condolence. The Chiefs organization and several individual players made personal and institutional donations to victim support funds.
Aftermath
The shooting reignited national debate over gun violence, concealed-carry policy in permissive states such as Missouri, and the practical limits of security for open-air mass-attendance civic events. Missouri’s legislative environment produced no substantive concealed-carry policy changes in the aftermath. Kansas City and the NFL undertook reviews of large-event security protocols for subsequent major civic and sporting gatherings.
Lisa Lopez-Galvan’s death deepened KC’s public engagement with its Mexican-American community and with KKFI 90.1 FM, which saw increased listenership and donor support. Memorial gatherings at Union Station on the February 14 anniversary have become part of the KC civic calendar.
The shooting also prompted public reflection on the 1933 Union Station Massacre — the June 17, 1933 shootout at the same site that killed five people including FBI Special Agent Raymond Caffrey. The coincidence of two mass-casualty events ninety-one years apart at the same location became a recurring element of civic and journalistic commentary on the 2024 shooting’s meaning for Kansas City.
See also
union-station, union-station-massacre, crown-center, liberty-memorial, quinton-lucas, kansas-city-chiefs, patrick-mahomes, travis-kelce, andy-reid, Wiki