KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Excitement is building for the Kansas City Chiefs' second straight Super Bowl appearance, but if the team wins another championship, one mom is hoping people don't celebrate by firing their guns.
Michele Shanahan DeMoss' daughter Blair was struck and killed by a stray bullet during the Fourth of July celebrations in 2011.
"A bullet hit her. It came from three football fields away, so we have been saying that from the beginning, since 2011, three football fields. So, as the Chiefs play football and I sit and try to watch football, that is what is in my mind. I counted over and over and over the length of a football field, three of them," DeMoss shared.
Blair was 11 when she died. DeMoss said her daughter would have recently celebrated her 21st birthday.
"What if you fire that gun after the Super Bowl, and you kill somebody? You want to live with yourself the rest of your life? I have to live with not having my daughter. My daughter that should be 21 years old. Who knows what she would be doing," DeMoss said.
A Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department spokesperson said celebratory gunfire is a problem.
After last year's Super Bowl victory, KCPD received 163 reports of gunfire in the evening and early morning hours of Feb. 2 and Feb. 3. However, a spokesperson said it's impossible to know how many of those calls were related to the game.
Going forward, every celebration DeMoss has will be without her daughter. Now, she wants others to think twice before pulling the trigger.
"A bullet doesn't have no name, have a face," DeMoss said. "Once it leaves that gun, you don't know, unless you are aiming at a target, where it's going."
DeMoss said "Blair's Law," legislation that would punish people firing their firearm in a reckless manner has been reintroduced in the Missouri legislature. Previous efforts to pass the bill have failed.
KCPD said they plan to address the issue of celebratory gunfire before the Chiefs play in the Super Bowl.