While Kansas City police have arrested four people to date in connection with the shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ celebratory parade last week, only two of them are currently facing murder charges; Lyndell Mays and Dominic Miller. According to an affidavit released by prosecutors, Mays was not only the initial aggressor in the shooting, but fired his first shots at a “random” victim who was part of a group that Mays claims was eyeing him suspiciously.
Surveillance video shows Mays and someone with him aggressively approached the other group, police say.
The video showed Mays was the first to begin shooting despite being surrounded by crowds of people, including children, according to one of the affidavits.
Mays told detectives “he hesitated shooting because he knew there were kids there,” according to the affidavit. He told investigators he began firing after someone in the other group said, “I’m going to get you,” which he took to mean they would try to kill him.
He said he chose a random person from the other group to shoot at as that person was running away, the affidavit says.
Mays was among those wounded when others in the group who he targeted fired back, and authorities say the gun they discovered near him when he fell had been reported stolen from the city at some point in the past.
Since the shooting, gun control activists and Democrats in the Missouri legislature have tried to pin the blame for the violence on the state’s gun laws (or lack thereof), but if what Mays told detectives is true it’s clear that it was his lack of self-control, not a lack of gun control, that sparked the shootout.
Missouri is a “Stand Your Ground” state, which means that someone facing an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm doesn’t have to try to retreat before defending themselves. But a verbal statement of “I’m going to get you” hardly meets the threshold of a reasonable fear of imminent danger, especially when Mays says he fired at someone who was actively running away.
When Missouri Gov. Mike Parson spoke to the media earlier this week, he said the issue is “much more than the gun”, and he’s absolutely right. I’m sure that there were plenty of lawful gun owners who were legally carrying amongst the hundreds of thousands of folks who attended the parade, and neither they nor their guns posed any threat to paradegoers. Based on the accounts of prosecutors and statements given by Mays, Miller, and other witnesses, it was the inexplicably idiotic decisions of a handful of individuals that directly led to the shooting.
Miller initially told investigators that he and his friends began running after hearing gunfire and that he was shot in the back, one affidavit says. When investigators told Miller they had video of him chasing someone in Mays’ group and shooting, Miller admitted to firing four to five shots, the affidavit said.
A bullet from Miller’s gun killed Lisa Lopez-Galvan, officials said Tuesday. Lopez-Galvan was in a nearby crowd of people watching the Chiefs rally, according to one of the affidavits.
Online court records did not list attorneys who could comment on the men’s behalf. The Missouri State Public Defender’s Office said applications for public defenders for the men had not yet been received by the Kansas City office.
Messages left with a possible relative of Miller were not immediately returned. The Associated Press could not find phone numbers for members of Mays’ family.
Authorities did not release ages for either man, but court records show Mays is in his early 20s and Miller is 18 or 19.
Authorities also detained two juveniles last week on gun-related and resisting arrest charges. They said Tuesday that more charges were still possible.
Again, based on May’s own account to police, he was well aware that he was in a crowd of people, including kids, and “hesitated” to draw his gun but chose to do so regardless of risk to those around him and without a legitimate threat to his own life. No gun control law’s going to prevent something like that from taking place, as we’ve seen in tightly gun-controlled cities like New York, where there’ve been similar shootings in recent days, including a shooting on a subway platform that was also allegedly sparked by a dispute between two groups of teens and young adults.
The shootings in Kansas City were the result of individuals who failed to use common sense and ignored their own judgment before opening fire in a crowd of people. They alone are responsible for what happened, not the politicians in Jefferson City, the makers of the guns that were used, or the lawful gun owners who are now the target of anti-2A lawmakers intent on stripping them of their own right to bear arms because of the actions of a few cowardly idiots.
