Chiefs Fan Who Tackled Suspected Gunman Hailed as a Hero: He ‘Risked His Life’
A football fan who observers are calling a Good Samaritan is being credited with saving lives after he tackled a suspected gunman Wednesday before police arrived at the tail end of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade that turned deadly.
A viral video appears to show an alleged gunman sprinting through the crowd when a man suddenly tackles him to the ground. The gunman briefly gets up before a second man tackles him back to the ground. That’s when the first man again pounces on the suspected gunman. The two heroic men laid on top of the alleged shooter until police arrived seconds later.
Trey Filter was the man who first tackled the man. His wife, Casey, then secured the gun.
A #Chiefs fan risked his life to tackle one of the shooters and prevent anyone else from being harmed. Absolutely heroic.
pic.twitter.com/TPG3tIGGxn— JPAFootball (@jasrifootball) February 14, 2024
One person was killed and at least 21 were injured, police say. At least nine of those injured were children. Three people were arrested.
“One guy was hollering and saying, you know, ‘Stop him, catch him,’ you know, ‘tackle him.’ And he was just bailing running,” Filter told KETV in Omaha. “And out of nowhere I heard that guy hollering, so I’m just like, ‘Okay, well, I’m right here.’ and I just, I never think about it — it was just a reaction. I didn’t hesitate — it was just do it. So I went to go tackle him and another gentleman did the same thing. And as I’m tackling him, I see his weapon either fall out of his hand or out of his sleeve. … So when I [saw] that hit the ground I’m like: Oh, you know, we got to take this guy down.”
Filter added, “I and another Good Samaritan did and we held him down. And it seemed like forever but … it was probably like 30 seconds holding him down. And me and the other gentleman are hollering at on goers, you know, ‘Where’s the cops?’
Police arrived roughly half a minute later.
Filter, a Chiefs fan, brought his wife and children to the parade.
“I don’t know if I knocked him out when I tackled him or what, but I had him squeezed so hard, he might have been passed out all the time for all I know. I just started racking him in his ribs,” Filter told The New York Post.
Filter, who lives near Wichita, took his kids out of school to attend the parade.
“I literally just wanted to get some good points in my kids,” he said. “I felt bad for taking them out of school, but it’s a unique situation, we’re in Kansas. ‘Let’s go to this thing.’ We went last year. I just wanted some dad points. I’m really glad we’re not in the other boat that those people are in.”
Filter, who owns an asphalt company, was hailed as a hero on social media.
“A #Chiefs fan risked his life to tackle one of the shooters and prevent anyone else from being harmed. Absolutely heroic,” one person wrote.
Here is one of the individuals who tackled the shooter at the Kansas City Chiefs parade.
Absolute. Hero.
pic.twitter.com/uuWzSfo594— Jonathan Martin (@JonathanKMartin) February 15, 2024
“The Chiefs need to give those dudes who tackled one of the shooters Super Bowl rings and tickets for life, man,” another person wrote. “Those guys represent the best of Kansas City and Chiefs Kingdom.”
The individual killed at the parade was identified as Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a mother of two who worked as a DJ in the area and who was described by friends to the Associated Press as a devout Catholic and devoted mom.
The parade had 800 police officers present, said Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves.
Image credit: ©Getty Images / Jamie Squire / Staff
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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