Have you ever been in a huge crowd of people? Well, I have. It was at the Chief’s Parade. The Chief’s Parade is a huge gathering that celebrates the Chief’s winning the Superbowl. Little did I know it would change my life.
It is February 14th of 2024. I wake up at my dad’s house excited for the day ahead of me. The night before I had laid out my outfit for me to wear that day. I had watched videos of the last Chief’s Parade, so I was even more excited to be there. My dad was helping work there, so we were able to stand right next to the stage.
We arrive at Union Station where the Chief’s Parade is. We walked around for a little bit when I started playing volleyball with a beach ball with a crowd of people. After a little while, we decide to go inside Union Station. Inside we went to a private area for employees and other important people. There we stumble upon Patrick Mahomes’ brother and dad. I take some pictures with them, eat some food, and then we go back outside.
After walking and sitting around some more, the Chiefs players arrived and they got on stage. We walked over to where we were standing to watch Tech N9ne sing and the players talk. The players finish talking and they are getting off stage. My dad’s boss tells us there is a place we can stand and high-five the players. I get to high-five players like Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Pacheco.
The next thing I know, police officers are running past me, I am confused about what’s going on until I hear someone say “shots fired.” My dad and I get pushed inside Union Station. We are standing in front of a barrier and I think that we are safe and nothing else is going to happen. But then everyone starts running towards where I’m standing. I run through the barrier with my dad in front of me. We run into a train waiting room, and we are in there for about 15 minutes.
Finally, the police tell us we can leave. We leave the room and they are making everyone go out of the same exit. We leave the building and we sit outside on a bench for a while. We finally get up and go to the car. We had to sit in our car for about an hour before we are able to leave because they were trying to find the person. After waiting for an hour, we finally leave and go to A & W.
Now, even after all of this time, it still scares me what happened that day. It made me realize that I might not make it out of a dangerous situation. If something like that ever happens, a good website to look at is https://988lifeline.org/. All of these things are how this day forever changed my life.
