KFF Health News and KCUR are following the stories of individuals hurt throughout the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl event. Listen to how one Kansas household is handling the injury.
Jason Barton didn’t wish to go to the Super Bowl parade this year. He informed a colleague the night before that he stressed over a mass shooting. It was Valentine’s Day, his better half is a Kansas City Chiefs superfan, and he could not manage to take her to video games because ticket costs skyrocketed after the group won the champion in 2020.
Barton drove 50 miles from Osawatomie, Kansas, to downtown Kansas City, Missouri, with his partner, Bridget, her 13-year-old child, Gabriella, and Gabriella’s school good friend. When they lastly got back that night, they cleaned up blood from Gabriella’s tennis shoes and discovered a bullet in Bridget’s knapsack.
Gabriella’s legs were burned by triggers from a ricocheted bullet, Bridget was stomped while protecting Gabriella in the turmoil, and Jason provided chest compressions to a guy hurt by shooting. He thinks it was Lyndell Mays, one of 2 males charged with second-degree felony murder.
“There’s never ever going to be a Valentine’s Day where I recall and I do not consider it,” Gabriella stated, “since that’s a day where we’re expected to have a good time and value individuals that we have.”
One month after the parade in which the U.S. public health crisis that is weapon violence played out on live tv, the Bartons are reeling from their function at its center. They were simply feet from 43-year-old Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was eliminated. Twenty-four other individuals were hurt. The Bartons aren’t consisted of in that main victim number, they were shocked, physically and mentally, and discomfort penetrates their lives: Bridget and Jason keep canceling strategies to go out, deciding rather to remain home together; Gabriella prepares to sign up with a boxing club rather of the dance group.
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Throughout this very first month, Kansas City neighborhood leaders have actually weighed how to look after individuals captured in the bloody crossfire and how to divide more than $2 million contributed to public funds for victims in the preliminary profusion of sorrow.
The concerns are significant: How does a city compensate individuals for medical expenses, healing treatments, therapy, and lost incomes? And what about those who have PTSD-like signs that could last years? How does a neighborhood determine and look after victims typically ignored in the very first flush of reporting on a mass shooting: the hurt?
The hurt list might grow. District Attorneys and Kansas City authorities are installing a legal case versus 4 of the shooting suspects, and are motivating extra victims to come forward.
After shooting broke out at the Super Bowl parade on Feb. 14 in Kansas City, fans hid and others got away.(Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service through Getty Images)
“Specifically,