(Reuters) – Trey Filter, a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, was leaving a Super Bowl victory rally with his family when shots suddenly broke out, and people started running and shouting, “He’s got a gun! Get him!”
He spotted the man everyone was yelling about and quickly assessed the situation. “I did the math right there and jumped,” the 40-year-old paving company owner from Wichita, Kansas, said in an interview.
Filter and another Chiefs fan, Paul Contreras, tackled the man and then he was detained for questioning by the police along with two others following Wednesday’s deadly shooting outside Union Station.
The shooting was said to be the result of a dispute between individuals, according to police on Thursday.
The gunfire turned a joyous celebration between the Super Bowl champions and their hometown fans into a tragedy. A beloved local radio DJ was killed, and 21 others were injured. It was Valentine’s Day.
Filter said he initially thought the sound was fireworks. “We didn’t think much of it,” he said. He felt it had been a “great day” celebrating the Chiefs’ 25-22 victory over San Francisco in Sunday’s championship game.
Filter and Contreras instructed the man they had tackled to “stay down, until a couple of cops pulled us off him,” Filter said. His wife, Casey, recovered what they believed was the man’s AK-47 style rifle.
Kansas City police did not immediately return calls seeking information about the man the two men subdued.
Fifteen people had life-threatening injuries, and 11 of those harmed were children, officials said.
Filter told Reuters that he hadn’t slept much on Wednesday night and that he and his family were “just trying to find out why this happened, like everyone else.”
Contreras, the fan who helped Filter subdue the suspect, told his hometown television station KETV in Omaha, Nebraska, that the man appeared to drop his gun when Contreras tackled him from behind.
“I kinda got him high and the other guy gets him around his waist, and we’re just putting our weight on him, and he’s fighting to get up,” Contreras told the station.
A video shot by Contreras’ daughter Alyssa in the aftermath of the incident showed police officers clustered around a man on the grass next to a concrete barricade, with hundreds of Chiefs fans watching from the other side.
Once police arrived, Contreras said, he barely exchanged words with them. He waited with his three daughters for a few minutes and then headed to their car.
(Reporting by Rich McKay and Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Howard Goller)
