KFF Well being Information and KCUR are following the tales of individuals injured through the Feb. 14 mass taking pictures on the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs Tremendous Bowl celebration. Take heed to how survivors are in search of a way of security.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Twenty-four minutes earlier than the mass taking pictures on the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs Tremendous Bowl victory parade in February left one individual useless and at the very least 24 folks injured, Jenipher Cabrera felt a bullet pierce the again of her proper thigh.
The 20-year-old and her household have been simply 4 blocks from Union Station, in a river of red-shirted Chiefs followers strolling towards the huge rally after the parade that heat Valentine’s Day. The bullet — fired by teen boys preventing on the street — thrust Cabrera ahead.
She grabbed her mother by the shoulder and signaled in panic to her bleeding leg along with her massive brown eyes, not saying a phrase. Cabrera was being handled in an ambulance when she heard stories blasting from the police radio.
“My mom was trying to get on the ambulance,” Cabrera mentioned. “I remember them saying, like, ‘You can’t get on. There might be other victims that we need to pick up.’”
Cabrera’s taking pictures occurred earlier than the one which garnered the large headlines that day and is considered one of lots of that kill or injure Kansas Metropolis-area residents annually. That limitless drumbeat of gun violence — from one-off incidents to mass shootings — has shattered the sense of security for individuals who survive. As victims and their households attempt to transfer ahead, reminders of gun violence are inescapable within the media, of their communities, of their every day lives.
“I look at people differently,” mentioned James Lemons, who was shot within the thigh on the rally. Now when he’s round strangers he can’t assist however marvel if they’ve a gun and if his youngsters are protected.
The brand new NFL season opened right here with a second of silence for Lisa Lopez-Galvan, the one individual killed on the parade. Kansas Metropolis has recorded at the very least 124 homicides this yr. Native police say there have been a further 476 “bullet-to-skin victims” — individuals who have been shot and survived. And there have been at the very least 50 college shootings nationwide by mid-September.
Collectively it’s all taking a toll.
Survivors endure panic assaults and really feel a heightened sense of hazard in crowds and deep anxieties about the specter of violence anyplace in Kansas Metropolis.
Each taking pictures survivor responds in their very own option to gun violence and even the specter of it, in accordance with LJ Punch, a trauma surgeon by coaching and founding father of the Bullet Associated Damage Clinic in St. Louis.
For some, getting shot ensures they’ll all the time be on guard, even perhaps armed. Others need nothing to do with weapons ever once more.
“But what’s the common ground? That people desperately want to be safe,” Punch mentioned.
Cabrera’s search to make which means out of what occurred has led her to work with a annoyed native lawmaker in search of new gun legal guidelines — one thing akin to unimaginable given Missouri state regulation, which prohibits practically any native restrictions on firearms.
Studying of Different Shootings on the Cellphone
Feb. 14 is a film in Cabrera’s thoughts, in gradual movement, body by body, and the soundtrack is her voice, speaking and speaking. She sees a bunch of rowdy teenage boys working round her and her household. Then two pops — fireworks? One other pop. Lastly, a fourth.
“I think that’s where the shock kicked in, and I grabbed my mom,” Cabrera remembered. “I didn’t say anything to her. I just, like, looked at her, and I had, like, my eyes were widened, and I kind of signaled with my eyes to look down at my leg.”
Cabrera fell and different followers rushed to her rescue, calling 911, and commenced reducing off her leggings. 4 males immediately pulled off their belts when requested for a tourniquet. She remembers pondering that if she misplaced consciousness, she might die. So she talked and talked. Or so she thought.
Considered one of her rescuers later mentioned she really didn’t say a phrase even when he requested what number of fingers he was holding up.
“He told me [that] my eyes were huge, like oranges, and that all I was basically doing was, like, looking up and down four times since he had four fingers up,” Cabrera mentioned.
Cabrera remembers being moved out of the emergency room at College Well being to make room for 12 individuals who got here in from the taking pictures on the rally, together with eight with gunshot wounds. She checked social media on her cellphone — one other taking pictures? Unreal. Lastly her dad and mom discovered her. She spent seven days within the hospital.
Cabrera is grateful to be alive. However she is triggered now when she sees teams of teenage boys cursing and enjoying, or when she sees purple Chiefs shirts. Listening to 4 pops in a row — a daily prevalence in her northeast Kansas Metropolis neighborhood — makes Cabrera’s chest swell and he or she braces for a panic assault.
“It runs over and over and over and over in my mind,” she mentioned.
‘An Increasing Sense of Threat?’
The U.S. surgeon normal declared gun violence a public well being disaster in June, however practically any new regulation on weapons is a political nonstarter in Missouri. In actual fact, a 2021 state regulation — signed at the Kansas Metropolis-area gun retailer the place one of many weapons used within the parade taking pictures was bought — would have barred native police from implementing federal gun legal guidelines. The regulation was struck down by a federal appeals courtroom in August.
Missouri has no age restrictions on gun use and possession, though federal regulation largely prohibits juveniles from carrying handguns.
Polling of Missouri voters exhibits help for requiring background checks and instituting age restrictions for gun purchases, but additionally practically half have been against permitting counties and cities to cross their very own gun guidelines.
Per capita, Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, is among the many extra violent locations within the nation. From 2014 to 2023, there have been at the very least 2,175 shootings on this metropolis of 510,000, leaving 1,275 folks useless and 1,624 injured. And whereas homicide charges fell in additional than 100 cities throughout the nation final yr, Kansas Metropolis recorded its deadliest yr on report.
Punch, of the Bullet Associated Damage Clinic, likened the violence to a illness outbreak that goes unaddressed and spreads. The state’s permissive posture towards weapons would possibly supercharge the truth in Kansas Metropolis, Punch mentioned, but it surely didn’t begin it.
“So is there something going on? Is there an increasing sense of threat?” Punch requested.
Jason Barton was conversant in that violence rising up in Kansas Metropolis. Now settled in Osawatomie, Kansas, he thought lengthy and laborious about bringing his personal gun for cover when he drove his household to the Tremendous Bowl parade.
In the end he determined towards it, surmising that if one thing occurred and he pulled out a gun, he could be arrested or shot.
Barton responded shortly to the taking pictures, which occurred proper in entrance of him and his household. His spouse discovered a bullet in her backpack. His stepdaughter’s legs have been burned by sparks from a bullet ricochet.
Regardless of his worst fears coming true, Barton mentioned not bringing his gun that day was the fitting resolution.
“Guns don’t need to be brought into places like that,” he mentioned.
‘A 12-Gauge With Teeth’
Mass shootings can derail survivors’ sense of security, in accordance with Heather Martin, a survivor of the Columbine Excessive Faculty taking pictures in 1999 and co-founder of The Rebels Challenge, which supplies peer help to survivors of mass trauma.
“Trying to find a way to feel safe again is very common,” Martin mentioned, “in the years following it.”
James Lemons had all the time felt trepidation about returning to Kansas Metropolis, the place he grew up. He even introduced his gun with him to the parade however left it within the automobile on the urging of his spouse. His 5-year-old daughter was on his shoulders when a bullet entered the again of his thigh. He shielded her from the bottom as he fell. What was he realistically going to do with a gun?
And but he can’t assist however marvel “what if.” He can’t shake the sensation that he failed to guard his household. Waking up from goals in regards to the parade, “I just start crying,” he mentioned. He is aware of he hasn’t processed it but however he doesn’t know tips on how to begin. He has centered on his household’s security.
They bought two American bulldogs this summer time, making three whole in the home now — one for every child. Lemons described them as “like having a gun without having a gun.”
“I’ve got a 12-gauge with teeth,” Lemons joked, “just a big, softy protector.”
Most nights he sleeps just a few hours at a time earlier than waking as much as examine on the youngsters. Often he’s on the sofa. It’s extra comfy for his leg that’s nonetheless therapeutic, and it helps him keep away from the stressed kicks of his 5-year-old, who has slept along with her dad and mom for the reason that parade.
It additionally ensures he’ll be the one to intercept an intruder who breaks into the home.
Emily Tavis, who was shot by way of the leg, discovered solace at her church and from a sister congregation’s in-house therapist.
However then, the Sunday morning after the Donald Trump rally taking pictures in July, the preacher’s sermon turned to gun violence — triggering panic inside her.
“And it just, like, overwhelmed me so much, where I just went to the bathroom,” Tavis mentioned, “and I just stayed in the bathroom for the rest of the sermon.” Now even attending church offers her pause.
Tavis lately moved into a brand new home in Leavenworth, Kansas, that she is renting from a good friend. The good friend’s husband cautioned that if Tavis was going to be alone she wanted a gun for cover. She informed him she simply can’t cope with weapons proper now.
“And he’s like, ‘OK, well, take this.’ And he pulls out this giant machete,” Tavis recalled, laughing.
“So I have a machete now.”
A Seek for One thing Good
Cabrera, the younger girl who couldn’t communicate after being shot, is now attempting to make use of her voice within the combat towards gun violence.
Manny Abarca, a Jackson County, Missouri, legislator, lives down the road. One night, he came visiting. Cabrera’s dad and mom did a lot of the speaking; she’s shy by nature. However then he turned and requested her immediately: What did she need?
“I just want, like, some justice for my case,” she mentioned, “or something good to happen.”
Earlier than the parade, Cabrera was provided a manufacturing unit job the place her sister labored, however she hadn’t began as a result of her leg was nonetheless therapeutic. So Abarca provided her an internship, serving to him set up a Jackson County Workplace of Gun Violence Prevention, a plan he launched in July in response to the parade shootings.
Abarca was within the Chiefs victory parade along with his 5-year-old daughter, Camila. They have been in Union Station when photographs have been fired — they usually huddled in a downstairs rest room.
“I just said, ‘Hey, you know, just be calm. Just be quiet. Let’s just find out what’s going on. Something’s happened,’” Abarca mentioned. “And then she said, ‘This is a drill.’ And hey, it tore everything out of me, because I was like, she’s referring to her training” at college.
They emerged shaken however protected, solely to study that Lopez-Galvan had died. Abarca knew the 43-year-old mom and well-liked Tejano DJ by way of the world’s tight-knit Hispanic neighborhood.
Abarca has taken benefit of this heated time after the Tremendous Bowl parade shootings to work on anti-violence measures, regardless of figuring out the extreme limitations posed by state regulation.
In June, the Jackson County Legislature handed a measure that provides native tooth to a federal home violence regulation that enables judges to take away firearms from offenders.
However Abarca hasn’t been in a position to get the gun violence workplace authorized, and county officers have refused to take up one other measure that will set up age limits for buying or possessing firearms, fearing a lawsuit from a combative state lawyer normal. He employed Cabrera, he mentioned, as a result of she is bilingual and he needs her assist as a survivor.
In a way, the work makes Cabrera really feel stronger in her combat to maneuver ahead from the taking pictures. Nonetheless, her household’s notion of security has been shattered, and nobody will likely be attending video games or a attainable Tremendous Bowl victory parade anytime quickly.
“We just never expected something like that to happen,” she mentioned. “And so I think we’re gonna be more cautious now and maybe just watch it through TV.”
