KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - It was a beautiful morning in Kansas City on Feb. 14, 2024. Chiefs Kingdom had reason to celebrate: back-to-back Super Bowl titles and three NFL championships in five seasons.

Fans lined the parade route from downtown Kansas City to The Crossroads well before sunrise. The stage at Union Station was set for the Championship rally on an unseasonably warm day in mid-February.

The excitement was palpable.

‘The whole day was great—until it wasn’t'

The Chiefs championship parades and rallies have always been family affairs. Many school districts canceled classes so students could take part in the festivities.

The Galvan family looked forward to another great celebration.

“We all woke up at like seven in the morning just to go to my grandma’s house and beat the traffic from all of the people trying to get to the rally,” said Adriana Galvan, the daughter of Lisa Lopez-Galvan .

The family scouted the whole area to find a spot where they’d be able to see the players and hear their speeches. Adriana said they found a spot close to the stage.

“At the beginning it was great,” said Adriana. “Everybody was all just hyped up. Really just trying to celebrate the Chiefs.”

The rally was just wrapping up and the crowd was starting to pack up and making their way away from Union Station.

“We took one final picture as a group,” said Adriana. “That’s when we turned around. That’s when all the shots just went off.”

‘All of a sudden—POP. POP. POP.’

Dr. Erika Carney and Dr. Jennifer Watts, physicians at University Health and Children’s Mercy Hospital, respectively, were among the healthcare professionals on hand to provide medical care to those attending the celebration.

“No matter how early you get there, the crowds have started,” said Dr. Carney, with University Health. “Kansas City is a city that celebrates well. We love to celebrate our teams.”

The medical team expected a good day at what Carney called, “A nice, fun, family event.”

“This was our third Super Bowl parade,” said Carney, “We were very proactive, we were very well-staffed, we’d been training for this.”

But Adriana had a bad feeling about the celebration.

“In my head, throughout that whole time, I was thinking, ‘this is just too good to be true,’” remembered Adriana. “Something doesn’t seem like it’s going to end, like—good.”

The festivities just started to wrap up. KCTV5 was nearly finished with the parade coverage and about to return to regular programming.

“The party right here is over, but this isn’t something that people are not going to forget for a long time,” KCTV5 anchor Brad Stephens told the viewers watching from home that day.

“We were two minutes from saying goodbye,” anchor Carolyn Long remembered. “We had started to say goodbye to our viewers saying we’ll see you tonight at 10 o’clock.”

“This felt so good. Everything felt so right,” said Stephens. “And then, all of a sudden, we noticed something.”

“The crowd is running. Everyone is trying to get away,” said KCTV5 sports reporter Neal Jones, who was reporting from the rally site that day.

“And I begin to talk into the microphone and trying to get the attention of our anchor, ‘Hey guys, we have a problem,’” said Jones.

Full of chaos

Mass confusion swept the crowd as people ran to escape the danger . Friends and family became separated. As people ran to evacuate the area, some 800 law enforcement officers rushed in. Police told fans to leave the area immediately, leaving their belongings behind.

“It was mayhem as people tried to escape,” Jones said. “It was horrible. People are on the ground. People have been hurt. We had people running by us who had been shot.”

Andriana said she felt bullets coming towards her group. She looked around and everyone was on the ground.

“I saw that my mom was hit, and my brother,” Adriana said. “I looked up, and I saw my dad trying to turn [my mom] over. He moved her to see if she got shot or anything, and we saw that there was a bullet wound in her stomach.”

Adriana said it took several minutes for her mother to get medical attention. A civilian who knew CPR tried to help.

“I was holding her hand the whole time and you could just tell,” she recalled through tears. “She was just gone right there.”

“Me and my dad saw my brother get taken to the hospital. We noticed that it was just him. And he yelled at us, he asked us, ‘Where’s Mama?’” said Adriana.

In the medical tent, doctors heard over the radio that multiple juveniles were down.

“We turned around and we’re like, ‘We have to go,’” said Watts. “That’s what we do. We hear kids are down, we go...We had the panic attacks, we had crushed injuries, trampled injuries, we had cuts, scraps, bruises, bangs.”

“We’d get reports in of how many people were injured and I had a number going,” said Long. “And that number. I kept putting a line through—it kept going up, and up, and up. And I thought, ’My God, please let this stop.’”

And then the medical tent became a homicide scene.

At the hospital, Adriana and her father waited for word.

“I just went ballistic. I went crazy,” said Adriana.

“We needed time ourselves to have a moment to pause, to grieve, we had a life lost in our tent,” said Watts. “And we all wish we could have done something to save her that day.”

Lisa Lopez Galvan was 43 years old. She was a wife, mother and radio host. She was described as a lover of music and the community and worked at KKFI as the host of Taste of Tejano.

Lisa was also a DJ for special events, where she was known as Lisa G. She played at weddings, parties and fundraisers.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Redemptorist Catholic Church for her funeral. A friend attending the service said, “It’s OK to mourn somebody’s death, but let’s celebrate her life. Let’s remember all the good things that she’s done.”

Remembering Lisa Lopez-Galvan

At the start of the 2024 season, the Chiefs honored Lisa Lopez-Galvan with a moment of silence.

Adriana told KCTV5 at the time that her mom would have loved to have been a part of it.

“That moment of silence was definitely—it really just made the whole world see her. Just from that moment," Adriana said. “And I’m glad that they did something for her.”

Neal Jones said that while he’s been in stadiums dozens of times for moments of silence, this one was different.

“Usually people are kind of fidgeting, and waiting for the game to begin, and like, ‘Come on, let’s do it,’ Not at Arrowhead,” said Jones. “So many of the people in the stands were the same people who were here that day, or they were watching on television. This was one time when everybody stood there, and it was utterly silent as people contemplated what had happened.”

As for Lisa Lopez-Galvan’s family, Adriana said they’re still grieving and taking things day by day.

“I still get flashbacks,” said Adriana.

She is working to carry on her mom’s tradition as a DJ . After a fundraising gig several weeks after her mother’s death, she told us she made sure to include “Ya Te Vi,” a song her mom was known for playing and one they would sing together.

“I hear her voice every time it’s playing,” Adriana told us previously. “Her singing it. In the car every day.”

One year after the shooting, the hurt persists.

Many Kansas Citians still are not comfortable returning to the site. They can’t forget what they saw and heard, and the panic that ensued.

“I think there were a lot of people who came to that parade—when they left, they were different people,” said Neal Jones. “Less trustworthy. Less willing to go out in public in a massive crowd like that.”

Jeff Howard, the director of chaplain services at University Health, was at the rally that day and saw many of those affected at the hospital.

“You’re never going to forget about it or get over it, but you can heal,” said Howard. “A part of healing is recognizing you’re not going to be what everybody maybe wants you to be again.’

“There is a place in this City’s heart—the heart of America—that still thinks about that poor victim that day and her family,” said Long. “Of all days to lose a life, that day? And that way? It wasn’t fair. It’s just so unfair.”

Case continues

Court records show that Lisa Lopez-Galvan was shot to death because people from one group were staring at another group. It escalated to a verbal argument and then shooting.

In addition to Lopez-Galvan’s death, 22 others were shot and injured . Several others were injured in other ways as people tried to flee.

Three adults and three children were charged in the mass shooting.

here .