'Never in a million years': K-State soph survives KC shooting scene

At first, he assumed they were just part of the celebration. Chiefs radio voice Mitch Holthus had just wrapped up his comments a few seconds earlier, so it made sense there might have been some pyrotechnics.

Buckner, an accounting student from Lenexa, wasn’t the only one who thought so because the people around him remained calm. However, when he turned to his left, he noticed those halfway between himself and the sounds were scrambling away in whatever direction they could.

That was when he realized the noises hadn’t been fireworks.

They were gunshots.

“My initial reaction was, basically, to get out of there,” Buckner said. “I’ve never been in a situation like that. I was trying not to panic because everyone else around me wasn’t. There wasn’t really anywhere to move, but it was definitely scary.”

The rapid-fire shots Buckner heard left one person — a mother of two — dead and wounded 22 others, including 11 children between the ages of 6 and 15.

Kansas City police chief Stacey Graves estimated 1 million people attended the parade, and Buckner said the crowd was so tightly packed in that getting anywhere fast was all but impossible.

In hindsight, he believes the confused composure of those around him was a good thing.

“I feel like people could have gotten trampled if the chaos ensued throughout the whole party that was there,” he said.

Eventually, he and his friends moved eastward away from the commotion, though the mass of people also heading that direction made progress difficult.

He began to see people overwhelmed with emotion as well as police officers “with their big guns drawn” rushing toward the scene.

“It was an almost immediate response from the police officers as we were turning away to walk away,” Buckner said. “You hear the sirens, and you see at least 10 groups of five to 10 police officers running by. You saw a whole bunch of them run inside Union Station.”

Police detained three people, two of whom were minors, in connection with the shooting and recovered several firearms.

It took Buckner and his friends nearly an hour to get back to their car parked near the T-Mobile Center, a walk that should have taken them half that time.

The reactions from the police and his fellow Chiefs fans made it clear something bad had transpired. Friends and family reached out to make sure Buckner was safe, and they passed along information they’d learned on the news.

During that trek, Buckner and his friends tried to process what they’d witnessed. He said he knew beforehand an event like a celebratory parade with so many attendees posed a certain level of risk, but that possibility becoming a reality left him “shell-shocked.”

“Never in a million years would we have thought that something like that would have actually happened,” he said.

Buckner said he was “glued to the TV” the rest of the afternoon and evening, trying to understand what had transpired and hoping the casualties were minimal.

It was surreal to realize he’d been, perhaps ironically, the length of a football field away from an incident that had become headline news across the country.

“You always see stuff on TV and nationally, but you never think to yourself, ‘Oh, this could happen this close to home or especially somewhere where you’re at,’” he said. “It’s definitely scary to see it on a national level because you just never think it can happen to you.”

The shooting in Kansas City took place on the sixth anniversary of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead and 17 wounded.

Buckner said he was able to sleep Wednesday night, but there were “more thoughts racing through my head” as he went to bed.

“It was a picture-perfect day,” he said. “We were celebrating the Chiefs. Everyone was there and happy. It was all smiles. The Chiefs came and did their speeches. Everything was going as smooth as it could possibly go.”