It started as a happy day. Kids had the day off from school, the weather was great. Families and friends gathered in front of Union Station to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs back-to-back Super Bowl win.
Then shooters hit 23 people. They killed 43-year-old local radio DJ Elizabeth Galvin and injured many children. While it directly impacted these nearly two-dozen people, it is a wound that will leave a scar on the community for a long time, Brian Lock, an anchor with Audacy station KMBZ, told WWL’s Newell Normand.
“I was there before this happened, and I went down after this happened. I was not there when this happened,” he explained. “And I’m honestly… I’m… part of me is thankful I wasn’t there. Part of my journalistic bones says: ‘I should have been there,’ but I was not there. Thankfully, we did have many, employees, honestly, employees and city employees who were there. And thankfully everyone got out okay. No one was physically injured, but the emotional scars from this are going to run very, very deep.”
This Thursday, the Kansas City Police Department said that two juvenile suspects had been detained. On Friday, it announced that charges had been brought against the suspects.
Lock told Normand that there were an estimated 800,000 to 1 million gathered in downtown Kansas City for the parade as the Chiefs were getting ready to head to Arrowhead stadium and shooting began.
“That’s half of Kansas City… everybody was there. Everybody was traumatized by this,” he said. “And it’s going to take a long time to even unpack just what we’re feeling.”
With yet another mass shooting reported in the U.S., attending large public events and even going to school or going public spaces such as grocery stores have become more nerve-wracking for Americans. Normand asked Lock how he thinks Kansas City in particular can begin to heal after the tragedy.
“If you weren’t there, you know, somebody who was and you, you were instantly just… terrified. The second you heard what happened and, the, the process of going through had grief and that terror. I hope that we never experience that again,” he said “But as you say, Kansas City is a strong city. We are resilient. We are proud of the Kansas City Chiefs. They will persevere. They will be champions again. And we will have another celebration.
It may not look exactly like this, but it will be better. And when we do. I hope that we can close that chapter, that loop. I hope that we can start to get some closure for what happened. And It’s going to take… it’s going to take a long time.”
Listen to Lock and Newell’s full conversation here.