Bullet narrowly misses lung of 10-year-old boy injured in Chiefs parade shooting
A 10-year-old boy who was one of nearly two dozen shot at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade has shown off the gruesome gunshot wound that narrowly missed his lung — which he initially thought was pain from being trampled, only realizing it was a bullet hole once he was back home.
Samuel Arellano, a huge Patrick Mahomes fan, said he was enjoying Wednesday’s festivities along with his grandfather, aunt and uncle before the celebration turned into a nightmare.
“When I heard the gunshots, I hid,” the boy told The Independent. “I fell to the ground and then hid behind a trash can. Everybody was running, losing their shoes, losing their clothes.”
Samuel said instincts kicked in from active-shooter training at school.
“They showed me what to do — duck down, hide, don’t run,” he told KSHB.
But he felt that something had hit him amid the chaos, right before his group took cover under a trailer along with several other people, according to The Independent.
At one point, Samuel’s mom Aby got a call from his grandfather, her dad, who told her that they had not been struck – and thought the boy had only been trampled during the pandemonium.
When Aby went to pick up her family she noticed that Samuel was holding his rib in pain.
“It felt like getting stabbed,” the boy told KSHB said. “It could’ve been inches from my whole future.”
It was only when they got back home that they made the horrifying discovery that he had been shot – when they lifted up his red Chiefs jersey and noticed a gaping hole under his armpit.
“He kept saying that he’d been hit, but at the same time, I feel like he himself didn’t believe it … in that mind of shock,” his aunt, Eunice Salas, 25, told The Independent.
“Everyone was trying to comfort him, but at the same time, he was calm too,” she added. “We feel like it was a miracle, too, because he was not bleeding. He has the wound, but there was no blood or nothing running” down his body.
The boy was rushed to Mercy Children’s Hospital, where doctors “took some parts of the bullet out” and told his family that the injury was a fraction of an inch from the lung, his aunt told The Independent.
“They said that thank God that the bullet didn’t go in enough to cause any [further] damage,” Salas said.
Samuel told the outlet that he felt “kind of mad” about being shot – and that a “great experience” was marred by gun violence.
Salas said the family decided to speak out to raise awareness.
“We feel like a lot of people obviously feel for us, and there’s a lot of people out there now, like, ‘It’s just a shooting,’ No. No. This was tragic. And I feel like people need to know that,” she told The Independent.
Aby also expressed her condolences to the family of Lisa Lopez-Galvan, the 44-year-old radio DJ who was killed in the mass shooting.
“We are devastated by the violence that occurred yesterday, what should have been a day of celebration and unity for our city,” she told the outlet in Spanish. “I ask for prayers for all the families affected.”
Samuel told KSHB that “looking at the (bullet) hole, I’m just going to get flashbacks.”
But his mom said she is grateful he made it out alive.
“I’m grateful with God, because he gave my son a second chance at life,” she said. “It was a long night, we couldn’t sleep, but thank God he’s with us.”
Half of the 22 people hospitalized after the shooting were reportedly between the ages of 5 and 16.
The incident was the result of a personal dispute that exploded into violence — and police have detained three people who may be at fault, authorities said Thursday.
