Chiefs' Trey Smith Details Hiding In A Closet, Protecting Kids During Kansas City Parade Shooting
Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman Trey Smith has detailed the scenes as an active shooter situation unfolded during the team's Super Bowl parade on Wednesday afternoon. Smith and his teammates went from celebrating their second-consecutive championship to hiding in a closet with civilians trying to protect themselves.
According to the latest reports, one person was killed and 21 others were shot during the terrible situation that unfolded at the end of the parade.
READ: Hero Who Helped Stop Kansas City Shooting Shares Incredible Insight On The Carnage
Smith joined ‘Good Morning America’ on Thursday morning and put things into an eerie perspective, detailing how the parade started out just like last year's, but things quickly changed into a real-life horror.
The former Tennessee star recognized that this was "a life or death situation" when security began ushering players out of the area while shouting "hurry up, hurry up."
As he and some of his Kansas City teammates began running for their lives, they decided to hide in a closet, but just before he entered the jam-packed room, he noticed a little kid. Smith snatched him up and brought him inside with him.
"Right before I run in there, there was a little kid in front of me, so I just grabbed him and yanked him in, 'you're hopping in there with me, buddy,'" Smith said. 'I don't know how many people there were in the closet - maybe 20 plus?"
Smith then went on to give credit to long-snapper James Winchester for keeping everyone in the closet calm amid so much uncertainty outside the room.
"My long snapper, James Winchester, was very instrumental in helping keep people calm," Smith explained. "We end up getting the green light to be able to get out of there. We end up walking to the buses."
As he made his way onto the bus, which was all of a sudden filled with fans, Smith noticed another frightened child. In hopes of calming the kid down, Smith handed over the WWE belt he had been carrying with him during the parade while trying to take the child's mind off of what was occurring.
"I had the WWE belt on me the entire parade," Smith said. "I was thinking, what can I do to help him out? I just handed him the belt, 'hey, you're the champion. No-one's gonna hurt you man, we got your back.'
"We just start talking about wrestling, ''who's your favorite wrestler, what's your favorite wrestling match.'"
"He was looking out the window and seeing people reacting, trying to get out of that situation, so I just said, 'here you go buddy, this is yours.'"
While Smith was able to protect one kid, and deliver a memorable moment to another, he was also angry, just as everyone should be.
"I'm pretty angry, it's senseless violence," Smith said. "Children were injured, children were traumatized. I'm hurting for the families and the people impacted, and the city of Kansas City."
Stephanie Meyer, chief nursing officer for Children's Mercy Kansas City, said it was treating 12 patients from the parade, including 11 children between the ages of 6 and 15.