ER nurse wishes she could’ve done more for parade victim. ‘It’s really eating me up.’
The Chiefs’ Chris Jones had just finished speaking at Wednesday’s Super Bowl rally when Chasitty Logsdon figured it was time to start packing up.
A lifelong Chiefs fan who traveled from Kentucky for the celebration, Logsdon and her family — mom, two nieces and two young sons ages 3 and 5 — had snagged a spot west of the stage and near Union Station’s parking garage.
With all their memories and selfies, it was time to head back to her mother’s home in Salina, Kansas.
“I was putting my son’s lawn chair in the bag and I heard this, ‘Pop, pop, pop,’” said Logsdon, 39. “We thought it was fireworks, you know. Because it was at the end.”
Then, soon, more of the same.
“All you hear is people screaming and running,” she said. “I heard people yelling, ‘Shots. Shots. Shots.’”
Within seconds, the ER nurse with 15 years experience would rush to help what she would later learn was one of 23 people shot at Union Station. One of those people — Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a Johnson County mom and local disc jockey and radio host — was killed.
“I walked around the corner, like around where I could see a little bit more, and could see that there was nobody else actively shooting,” Logsdon said. She could also see a man lying on the ground.
“I just threw the lawn chair back down,” she said. “And my mom’s like ‘Chasitty, what are you doing?”
She ran toward the man on the ground and soon saw a woman kneeling next to him, her left hand on his head and her right hand holding a cell phone to her ear.
“Where has he been shot?” she asked the woman.
The woman responded: “In the head.”
“I went around him and I got down on the ground,” the ER nurse said. Her foot was in a puddle of blood near the man.
“I felt his left radial arm and I didn’t feel a pulse,” she said. “So I literally started doing compressions.”
She knew they didn’t feel like good compressions. The man’s red hoodie was bloodied and she couldn’t get a firm grip. Within what “felt like seconds” a woman approached.
“‘I’m a medic,’” she told Logsdon. And though as a nurse she knew what to do, Logsdon also knew she had family — “they were all in hysterics, like crying” — who just wanted to go home and be safe.
“She literally jumped over me and she had a medic bag,” Logsdon said.
And as she left the area with her family, Logsdon took one last look back to the man she tried to help.
“I saw (the medic) on top of him, like compressing, doing compressions,” Logsdon said. “I was like, ‘Dear God, they’re still doing compressions.’”
In the hours since the shooting, the ER nurse has thought of the man she feels she wasn’t able to help enough. Because police have only confirmed the death of one woman, she assumes he’s alive, but — she wonders — how injured is he?
“I wish I could have done more,” she said. “I’m having the worst survivor’s guilt. It’s really eating me up.”
She also struggles with the questions from her 5-year-old son.
“He just asked simple questions like, ‘Are shootings bad? Why would anybody want to do this? Why would anyone want to hurt people?’”
On Thursday morning, Logsdon and her two boys loaded up and headed back to Kentucky. Forever impacted, at least in some way.
“I’m sad that this is what my kids are going to remember,” she said. “The Kansas City Chiefs is something that I love so dearly. And like this is always … going to be tied to that, you know? When it was supposed to be such a celebrated, good day.
“And it was good. Up until that point.”
