[ad_1]
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hundreds of mourners attended a funeral mass Saturday for a Kansas City-area DJ who died when she was shot during a celebration of the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory.
Lisa López-Galván was one of two dozen people who were shot when gunfire erupted Feb. 14 outside the city’s Union Station. She was 43 years old.
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 an opportunity for excitement and laughter.
With his casket near the front of the Redemptorist Catholic Church in Kansas City, Missouri, mourners, some wearing Chiefs jerseys, also listened to a mariachi band play and sing.
Along with her husband and young son, López-Galván 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 those in another group led to gunshots.
López-Galván, a music lover who played at weddings, quinceañeras and at an American Legion bar and grill, got caught in the middle of it. Everyone else survived.
Two men are charged with his death and two juveniles face firearms charges. His family responded to the charges this week with a statement expressing gratitude to police and prosecutors.
“Although it does not bring back our beloved Lisa, it is comforting,” the statement began.
Players and celebrities have reached out to his family. Pop superstar Taylor Swift, who is often in the stands during Chiefs games because she is dating tight end Travis Kelce, donated $100,000 to López-Galván’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 to obtain a similar jersey, possibly so the mother of two could lounge around in it. .
“As the family mourns their loss and grapples with their many wounds, I will continue to pray for their healing and the repose of Lisa’s soul,” Butker said in a statement.
Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramírez worked with López-Galván for about a year at a local staffing company, but they had known her since childhood. She was remembered as an outgoing, staunch Catholic, devoted to her family, passionate about connecting job seekers to employment and willing to help anyone.
And, they said, working part-time playing music allowed her to share her passion as one of the few Latina DJs in the area.
“This senseless act has taken a beautiful person from her family and this KC community,” radio station KKFI-FM, where she co-hosted a show called “Taste of Tejano,” said in a statement.
Izurieta and Ramírez said López-Galván’s roots in Kansas City run deep. His father founded the city’s first mariachi group, Mariachi México, in the 1980s, they said, and the family is well-known and active in the Latino community. Her brother, Beto López, is the executive director of Guadalupe Centers, which provides community services and operates charter schools for the Latino community.
López Galván and her two children attended Bishop Miege, a Catholic high school in a Kansas-side suburb, and she worked for years as a clerk at a police department there.
“This is another example of a real, loving human being whose life was tragically taken with a senseless act,” Beto Lopez said in an interview last week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”