16 February 2024 , 16:20
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A 10-year-old boy who was one of those wounded at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade shooting has shown off his gruesome gunshot wound.
The bullet narrowly missed Samuel Arellano’s lung, but he said he did not realise he had been shot until he arrived back at his home after the terrifying incident.
Samuel, who is a big fan of Patrick Mahomes, said he thought the pain in his chest was from being trampled in the chaos.
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“When I heard the gunshots, I hid,” he told The Independent. “I fell to the ground and then hid behind a trash can. Everybody was running, losing their shoes, losing their clothes.”
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He said his active-shooter drills at school meant he knew what to do as soon as he heard the shooting start.
“They showed me what to do — duck down, hide, don’t run,” he told KSHB.
People flee after shots were fired near the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl LVIII victory parade on February 14 (AFP via Getty Images)But right before he took cover with others under a trailer Samiel said he felt something hit him in the chaos. Samuel’s mum, Aby, spoke to her father on the phone who told her that none of their group had been shot, he thought the boy had just been trampled in the chaos.
But when she came to collect Samuel she noticed he was clutching his side in pain. “It felt like getting stabbed,” Samuel told reporters. “It could’ve been inches from my whole future.”
It was not until Aby got him home that she made the horrifying discovery that her son had been shot, lifting up his red Chiefs football jersey to find a gaping wound 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,” said his aunt, Eunice Salas, 25, speaking to the Independent.
First responders tend to an injured person as they bring her out of Union Station near the parade (AFP via Getty Images)“Everyone was trying to comfort him, but at the same time, he was calm too,” she said. “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.”
They rushed him to Mercy Children’s Hospital where medics “took some parts of the bullet out”, explaining to the family that the shot passed a fraction of an inch from his lung. “They said that thank God that the bullet didn’t go in enough to cause any [further] damage,” Salas said.
Speaking after the incident the little boy said he was “kind of mad” about being shot adding that a “great experience” had been ruined by the gun violence.
His aunt said the family wanted to share Samuel’s story to raise awareness of the shooting. “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.
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Kansas City Chiefs fans gathered at Union Station during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl LVIII victory parade (Getty Images)Mum Aby said she was just glad her little boy survived the pandemonium. “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.”
Police say 22 people were hospitalised after the shooting, half of them were reportedly children between the ages of 6 and 16. Police have arrested three people in connection with the incident, authorities said Thursday. It was reportedly the result of a personal dispute that exploded into violence.