State Reps. Burger, Brown recall chaos at Chiefs parade

It was meant to be a day of celebration in Kansas City.

The sun was out, spirits were high and the Kansas City Chiefs, along with their fans, were commemorating the team's third Super Bowl victory in five years.

Then, gunshots rang out, draping a dark cloud over the event. One person was killed and 22 injured during the incident that allegedly stemmed from an argument. Two adults have since been charged with gun-related offenses as well as resisting arrest.

District 148 Rep. Jamie Burger was at the event with his 14-year-old grandson. Neither knew about the shooting until after they had left and Burger began receiving text messages asking if he was OK.

"We could see the players. We weren't 125 feet from them, listening to them talk. When it got over, they started blowing that confetti in the air and that stuff is as aggravating as can be because it's dusty. It went down my neck and, what little hair I've got, it was in my hair. I told my grandson, I said, 'Let's leave,'" Burger said. "We walk into Union Station and we're about to the bottom of the escalators when the SWAT team is running up the steps. Somebody said, 'What's the SWAT team doing?' And I said, 'I guess they're going up to make sure the players get to the buses OK.' We didn't know what happened. We walked out of the building, walked across a big parking lot and got on a bus. By that time my phone's blowing up from the Capitol from people that know I'm attending the event, and from Southeast Missouri where we live, asking if we were OK and we don't even know anything happened."

Chris Brown

District 16 Rep. Chris Brown of Kansas City wasn't so lucky.

Brown, his wife and two children were walking into Union Station together when Brown saw people jumping the barricade near the stage. Not knowing what was going on, Brown headed to the restroom.

"Me being 58 years old, I felt like I had better go to the restroom before we go get on these buses," Brown said. "When we went into Union Station, it was still OK. There was no panic in there. Well, going to the restroom turned out to be a mistake."

Suddenly, pandemonium broke out.

"It was like a scene out of a movie," Brown said. "I mean, there was just a mass of people coming down that hallway shouting, screaming and somebody yelling 'shooter'. People are in panic mode coming down that hallway and you're just kind of swept along with it. The only thing I'm thinking is, 'Oh my gosh, my wife and kids are out there.'"

Police clear the Kansas City Chiefs off the stage after a shooting at the end of their Super Bowl victory rally in Kansas City, Mo., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. Authorities in Kansas City are trying to decipher who was behind the mass shooting that unfolded Wednesday.(AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann)

Brown had given his cellphone to his wife just before going to the restroom because her phone's battery had died. Little did he know, he would be unable to contact his family for approximately an hour afterward.

"They thought that there was another shooting in Union Station, so when I finally clawed my way out of that bathroom hallway, I go out there and it is just absolute chaos in Union Station," Brown said. "(There were) police and pedestrians running everywhere, people overturning tables so they could get behind them, people ducking into any room or bathroom and just trying to get out from being out in the open. And my wife and kids are nowhere to be seen."

Brown said he spent approximately 20 minutes roaming Union Station shouting out for his wife before a friend of his loaned him their cellphone and he was able to call her.

"(I felt) immense relief," Brown said. "I mean, it's your wife and your kids and you just don't know. Are they safe? Are they OK? Are they hurt? Are they injured? Are they just out of their mind scared somewhere? To be able to talk to her and just hear her voice saying, 'Hey, we're fine. We're good'. That was an incredible amount of relief, without a doubt."

Burger said he was standing with Brown outside before he and his grandson went into Union Station, missing the chaos by mere minutes.

"I was probably one or two minutes ahead of him which was a blessing for me, but it was it was an odd moment. A very odd moment," Burger said. "We were sitting around that evening and it finally sinks in that we could have been hurt or harmed. It would have been bad enough if I got shot, but I couldn't live with myself forever if my grandson would have got shot.

"I could tell that Rep. Brown's children were upset about this whole ordeal of what they went through and my grandson really wasn't. But I know, at the same time, it was in the back of his mind because we talked about it when we drove back from Kansas City the next day."

Both representatives praised the Kansas City police for their response to the shooting.

"The police presence there was fantastic," Brown said. "Police response and law enforcement overall, I think they had a good day in terms of response to that extremely bad situation."

Despite being so close to the incident, Burger doesn't feel the need for gun laws in the state to change and still plans to attend events without fear in the future.

"I think we have ample gun laws. I think we need to have prosecution," Burger said. "We need to prosecute the gun laws that we have in place. We can make every gun law in the world, but that's not going to take guns out of criminals' hands. That's the problem. Right now, we're not prosecuting existing laws and creating more gun laws not to be prosecuted is not the direction that I'm heading.

"It's a shame, but I'm not going to let this act of violence deter me from doing what I want to do in my life. I'm still going to attend events when I want to go."