Welcome to MEET the Press Now. I'm KPT Harris and we begin this hour with breaking news out of Kansas City. A fire department official say at least 10 people have been struck by gunfire downtown near the Kansas City Chief super bowl parade route. Police say they've taken two people into custody and we're still getting details, including what led to the shooting.
But we can tell you that the shots were fired near Union Station. That's where the parade route ended. You're looking at footage that fed in from our NBC affiliate just moments ago showing at least one person being carried out on a stretcher. The incident happened right around the conclusion of the celebration for the Chief super bowl victory as a party like atmosphere quickly turned to panic.
And we've been watching live coverage of our NBC affiliate in Kansas City where celebration has turned into tragedy. At least 10 people shot at the end of the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs and local authorities. We understand that one of those people has died. Five people are in serious condition, three in critical and one with non life threatening injuries.
I'll go right to NBC News correspondent Jesse Kirch. He's joining us from on the ground in Kansas City. Jesse, what'd you see? Yeah, Gabe.
So we were here for the aftermath at that point of the Kansas City Chief super bowl celebration. And what we noticed after the rally had wrapped up, just minutes after that wrapped up, people as they were dispersing, thousands of people dispersing from this area, we saw a group over here rushing away. And at the same time we saw what appeared to be police officers rushing into the area. And while that was going on, we at one point eventually saw someone wheeled out in a stretcher over this area.
And then just in the last several minutes we saw someone appearing to be ushered out of the area and putting a vehicle by police. We'll leave the camera over there because that is the hive of activity right now. Just want to make sure we don't miss anything from our camera position. But I know we've been seeing, you know, these images coming in.
This was a day that started as a celebration here in Kansas City. This was the Chief winning their second super bowl title in a row. Officials expected there could be around a million people out here. You always have big crowds when you have a celebration like this.
But a couple extra factors. We are looking at temperatures around 60 degrees that is quite warm, right, For February. So that gives people incentive to come outside and enjoy the day out here. The other thing was there's of course Taylor Swift intrigue because of her Boyfriend Travis Kelsey on the Chiefs and her questions about if she would be here.
So there's a potential for Taylor Swift fans, Warren Chiefs fans per se, to also be at this event. And so those had officials expecting the possibility of larger crowds than they saw last year when they had a championship parade in this area. We had thousands of people. The rally had wrapped up, so people had started moving away.
But we're talking about about twice the population of Kansas City overall expected to be filling a stretch of downtown. And if you think about it, you can't just get from A to B quickly in that kind of. And even well after this incident unfolded and after we saw authorities rushing in and after the sirens started, we continued to see people milling about, including with children, and we saw people trying to walk away from the area and they were walking game. Cell reception has been issued out here.
So perhaps they didn't get any alerts at that point. We did not hear gunshots from where we were. So perhaps they just did not realize what was going on. And again, even if they were trying to rush out of here, I can't imagine how fast they could have actually gotten away from this area just because of the massive influx of people that were in this vicinity at the time things unfolded.
So I told you about what we saw on the ground. And at the same time we had at least one long gun on the rooftop. There was another crew with binoculars at least on the rooftop where we are right now. And those teams, as we noticed things changing on the ground, those teams seem to be paying closer attention to what was unfolding on the ground.
And we now know from officials that this wound up being a deadly incident. As you mentioned, there are multiple people who were injured as well because of the nature of this event. You have celebrity sports athletes here, you have athletes here. You have thousands upon thousands of people of all ages.
We also know there would be elected officials here. We know from their official Twitter accounts that the governors of both Kansas and Missouri were here at the rally. And we are told they are. Okay.
So just gives you a sense of the range of people who are here and just a number of people who were here. Gabe. At an event that was supposed to be a celebration and unfortunately has gone sideways and turned deadly. Gabe.
Jesse Kershaw lived for us in Kansas City. And Jesse and being told that in just a few moments. We're awaiting details from law enforcement officials in Kansas City. We're expecting a news conference at 4:30 Eastern Time.
So in just a few minutes, I'm gonna let you get to that, Jesse. Now, we're Jo, law enforcement analyst and retired ATF Special Agent in Charge Jim Cavanaugh. And Jim, I want to read some new reporting from our investigations unit. Our colleague Tom Winter says that at this early and preliminary juncture of the investigation, law enforcement officials believe that the shooting incident at the end of the super bowl celebration is criminal in nature and is not initially believed to be terrorism, according to three law enforcement officials briefed at the scene.
Jim, I want to go to you. What will be happening right now? What will law enforcement be looking at in the next few minutes? And again, as we await that news conference, we'll break away when we need to.
But, Jim, what is law enforcement doing first? Well, they're starting with the two guys that they have detained right away, Gabe, of course, interviewing them, knowing who they are, you know, if they are shooters or two armed men that they detained, that's going to give them a lot of the answers. Tom's reporting there does fit with what we've seen visually. You know, in this event, it seems to be that the shooting occurred as the crowd was dispersing the parade.
So the parade had passed, and now the crowd seems to be leaving. And, you know, if it was a terrorist event, we'd expect that maybe, you know, at the height of the event, when everything's excited, the attack would come where this sort of happens when the crowd dispersing. So what you may have happen is, you know, a couple of rival gang members see each other. They're always armed.
You know, they exchange some words, bump into each other. Maybe they didn't expect to see each other, something like that, or some kind of criminal dispute between persons, maybe not even gangs that people pull guns and the shooting begins. And of course, in a crowd like this, if there's even a shootout between parties, you'll have a lot of people struck because the bullets are gonna go somewhere. So that's a strong possibility just from what we visually see and what Tom Werner has reported.
But back to your question of what they're doing. They start with those two guys and then the detectives from Ken Siegem Repd and FBI and ATF agents who are on scene first, they act as detectives and they do interviews. They spread out, they gather information, and then they also layer on their special abilities to forensically work the crime scene. FBI brings in, you know, maybe evidence technicians.
They want ATF is expert on all the firearms matters. The bullet casings, the bullets, tracing the guns, ballistic information. They can see if those guns were ever used in crimes. Anywhere else.
So there's a whole lot of information, but it starts with those two guys. And Jim, you know, you know better than anybody how difficult it must be to secure that perimeter with so many people there. We're also learning new information on exactly when this all unfolded. According to some of the standard traffic, which of course is preliminary.
But at 2:49 Eastern Time is when the first shots rang out. The shooters were reported in custody at 3:03. So about 15 minutes after those initial shots and again, 10 people shot, one of them has died. We're waiting that news conference from local authorities.
And as we await that, Jim, we also want to mention five people are in serious condition, three people in critical condition. Tell me a little bit more. And then we mentioned the perimeter here, but it being so large, how difficult is it to get a handle on the situation when there are so many people there on the ground, Jim? Yeah, it's really tough, Gabe.
But you know, we did see in the video from the news footage when it happened, all the officers running into the train station, ironically, you know, the famous site of the Kansas City Massacre where Pretty Boy Floyd tried to break out a couple of gangsters that were in police custody. And there were four people killed there, two officers and two gangsters. Right. And bullet holes are still on the wall at that Union Station.
I've been to it many times. I was stationed in the Kansas City Division. I've been to that area many times. It's wide open, it's hard to secure.
They can put officers on the roofs. There's officers in the crowd. There's motorcycle cops and bicycle cops and cops on foot and horses. But the crowd's so large.
And you know, Missouri basically has very lenient gun laws. It's a constitutional open carry state. You know, guns are ubiquitous in Missouri. Everybody has guns.
So, you know, you can't, you can't unless you're doing a metal detector thing on everybody that comes into the center of the city. The only place we really ever see that is at national special security events like in Washington inaugurals or, you know, New Year's Eve in New York City, you know, some Olympic activities over the years. It's very hard to do. It's very complicated.
It's not normally done at a parade because it's a huge route. So it's just very difficult for the police to secure that. I think, you know, this is a situation where the police really did everything they could do. They were quick to respond.
They apprehended two people. Hopefully they'll give us some more information. But you know, reaction's always slower than action. So the perpetrator is to pull the trigger before any cop can get there.
You have to stand 10ft away. You know Jim, we were watching our affiliates coverage of this and our colleague Jesse Kerr actually watched one of his earlier reports on MSNBC at the bottom of the 2 o' clock hour and just a few moments before this happened and it's really turned so quickly. And we heard from our reporters from the NBC affiliate on the scene how they all had to duck for cover, an emotional situation for them and also for those thousands of eyewitnesses celebrating what was supposed to be such a triumphant victory party for the Kansas City Chiefs again now turning into tragedy. Jim we're first we're getting our first reactions as well from some of the Kansas City Chiefs players.
Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs quarterback, posting on social media, quote, praying for Kansas City. We're also hearing from some more of the Chiefs as well as we look at these pictures and again we're waiting at news conference from local authorities where we hope to get more information. For those of you just joining us, at least 10 people shot, one of them has died. Five of them are in serious condition, three are in critical, one with non life threatening injuries.
But the number of injured could rise as any people that potentially were injured or injured in the chaos following go to local hospitals and we understand from our local affiliate that there were reunifications going on. Obviously in this conf, this type of confusion, family members might be separated from one another, they drop their phones, very difficult to get in touch with them. As you said, this perimeter is huge so it can be difficult to reunite with those family members. But Jen, talk to me more about the next steps here after the initial part of the investigation.
One of the questions that we always have in these types of shootings and you and I about talk during these many times, too many times in fact, but is a question of motives. And again, since we're hearing from our colleague Tom Winter, this does not appear to be terrorism according to the preliminary assessment of law enforcement officials. But you threw out some possible scenarios. But how quickly do you think we could get an idea of motive here?
Jim I think the police already know the motive, Gabe. If these two people they've detained or involved, they know, they know what happened from who they are, you know, what type of weapons they had, where the scenario took place, whatever statements they may make, you know. Of course we don't know all those answers, but we're analyzing this using you know, training and experience and years of doing it. And there is a possibility that we had some criminals who encountered each other and exchange words and, you know, a gunfight ensued.
And it's in the middle of this crowd. And so, you know, when everybody's spraying bullets around, then, you know, people are going to be hurt. Now, it may be that the shooters here were targeting the paradegoers. We don't have that answer yet for some motive, which could be hate, it could be power, revenge.
It could be tied to international events. We don't know the answer yet. Those are possibilities. But you would think if they were doing that, it would have been more at the height of the event and not when people were leaving.
You know, we just had the shooting at Joel Osteen's church. The killer there fired 36 rounds. 36 rounds from a rifle. The goal of that killer was mass murder.
She only shot one man in the leg. The child she had with her was grievously wounded, and she was killed by two officers who were there. But she wanted to kill a lot of people. She went into the church with the goal of mass murder, and that's why she fired 36 rounds.
But the crowd had thinned because it was between the services and, you know, it was the luck or God's grace that gave it that. But today, the gunfire roughs in the middle of the crowd. Think of the differences here. Just wait a few days.
36 rounds, only one person wounded. And here, 10 or more. Jim Davana, our NBC News law enforcement analyst. Jim, thanks so much for joining us.
I want you to stand by. But for those of you just joining us again, at least 10 people shot at the end of the Kansas City Chiefs super bowl parade. A day of celebration turning into chaos very quickly. At least one person has died, according to law enforcement officials.
The preliminary assessment does not believe it to be terrorism, but we are now going to rejoin our affiliate coverage in progress.