Funeral held for woman killed during K.C. parade

• Associated Press

Feb 24, 2024, 02:08 PM ET

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hundreds of mourners attended a funeral mass Saturday for a Kansas City-area DJ who was killed when she was shot during a celebration of the Chiefs‘ Super Bowl victory.

Lisa Lopez-Galvan was one of about two dozen people who were shot when gunfire erupted Feb. 14 outside the city’s Union Station. She was 43.

She was remembered during the 90-minute service as a loving wife and mother whose smile could light up a room and who saw each day as a chance for excitement and laughter.

With her casket near the front of the Redemptorist Catholic Church in Kansas City, Missouri, mourners — some wearing Chiefs jerseys — also heard a mariachi band play and sing.

Along with her husband and young adult son, Lopez-Galvan had joined an estimated crowd of 1 million people for the parade and rally. As the festivities ended, a dispute over what authorities described as the belief that people in one group were staring at people in another group led to gunfire.

Lopez-Galvan, a music lover who played at weddings, quinceañeras and an American Legion bar and grill, was caught in the middle of it. Everyone else survived.

Two men are charged in her death, and two juveniles face gun charges. Her family responded to the charges this week with a statement expressing thanks to police and prosecutors.

“Though it does not bring back our beloved Lisa, it is comforting,” the statement began.

Players and celebrities have reached out to her family. Pop superstar Taylor Swift, who is frequently in the stands during Chiefs games because she is dating tight end Travis Kelce, donated $100,000 to Lopez-Galvan’s family.

And because she was wearing a jersey of Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker at the celebration, he responded to requests on social media seeking help in obtaining a similar jersey — possibly so the mother of two could be laid to rest in it.

“While the family is mourning their loss and grappling with their numerous injuries, I will continue to pray for their healing and the repose of Lisa’s soul,” Butker said in a statement.

Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez worked with Lopez-Galvan for about a year at a local staffing firm but had known her since childhood. They remembered her as an extrovert and a staunch Catholic who was devoted to her family, passionate about connecting job seekers with employment and ready to help anyone.

And, they said, working part time playing music allowed her to share her passion as one of the area’s few Latina DJs.

“This senseless act has taken a beautiful person from her family and this KC Community,” the radio station KKFI-FM, where she was the co-host of a program called “Taste of Tejano,” said in a statement.

Izurieta and Ramirez said Lopez-Galvan’s Kansas City roots run deep. Her father founded the city’s first mariachi group, Mariachi Mexico, in the 1980s, they said, and the family is well known and active in the Latino community. Her brother, Beto Lopez, is CEO of the Guadalupe Centers, which provides community services and runs charter schools for the Latino community.

Lopez-Galvan and her two children went to Bishop Miege, a Catholic high school in a suburb on the Kansas side, and she worked for years as a clerk in a police department there.

“This is another example of a real loving, real human whose life was taken tragically with a senseless act,” Beto Lopez said in an interview last week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”