Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds Agence France-Presse Emergency responders were tending to a person injured by gunfire during the parade in Kansas City on Wednesday.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds – Agence France-Presse and Robin Legrand – Agence France-Presse in Kansas City and Washington
7:18 p.m.
- United States
Shooting during the parade Wednesday in Kansas City celebrating the Chiefs' Super Bowl victory left at least one dead and 21 injured, announced the fire chief of this city in Missouri, in the central United States.
Eight life-threatening patients were taken to hospital within 10 minutes of the shooting, Chief Ross Grundyson said at a news conference.
Stacey Graves, the Kansas City police chief, said that a total of three people had been arrested in connection with the shootings.
Children's Mercy pediatric hospital had earlier told AFP that it was treating 12 injured people from the gathering, including 11 children. “Nine have injuries caused by firearms,” detailed a spokesperson for the establishment.
Tens of thousands of people celebrated the Chiefs, who marched through the streets of Kansas City to celebrate their victory on Sunday in the Super Bowl, the annual high mass of American football.
The traditional convoy of double-decker buses went up Grand Boulevard towards Union Station. The shooting took place near the station parking lot as the parade was coming to an end.
“Insane”
“I thought they were fireworks,” John O'Connor told The Kansas City Star, explaining having heard “between 15 and 20 shots in a short period of time.”
In a statement, the Kansas City Chiefs said they were “saddened” and condemned a “senseless act of violence,” saying all of their players, coaches, staff, and families were safe.
Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes said “pray for Kansas City” in a post on X.
According to Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, authorities have been in contact with the White House, which has offered federal assistance. The latter specified that President Joe Biden had been informed of the situation.
The United States is paying a very heavy price for the spread of firearms on its territory and the ease with which Americans have access to them. The country has more individual weapons than inhabitants: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and almost one in two adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.
The consequence of this proliferation is the very high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, incomparable to that of other developed countries.
“Threat”
The mayor of Kansas City, who was present with his family during the parade, said he was “angry.”
A parade to celebrate a Super Bowl victory, “it’s a day that many people hope to remember for the rest of their lives; and what they shouldn’t have to remember is the threat posed by gun violence,” Quinton Lucas said at a press conference.
About 49,000 people died from gunfire in 2021, compared to 45,000 in 2020, which was already a record year. This represents more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.
However, it is the mass shootings that stand out the most, while illustrating the ideological divide separating conservatives and progressives on the question of how to prevent such tragedies.
Recent American history is indeed punctuated by killings, with no place in daily life seeming safe, from the business to the church, from the supermarket to the discotheque, from public roads to public transport.
Among all these massacres, some perpetrated in schools particularly shocked public opinion, such as that perpetrated in 2012 by an unbalanced man in an elementary school in Connecticut, during which 20 children aged 6 and 7 years had been killed.
The United States Congress has not adopted an ambitious law, many elected officials being under the influence of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the leading American arms lobby.
In fact, in a country where the possibility of owning a firearm is considered by millions of Americans as a fundamental constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances remain marginal, such as the generalization of firearm controls. 'judicial and psychiatric history before any weapon purchase.