Wichita nurse gave first aid to man at Chiefs’ parade shooting now charged as suspect

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) — Jessica Dean, a hospice nurse from Wichita, rushed to help a man bleeding from gunshot injuries at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl mass shooting. She suspected it then at the time but now has confirmed that the person she helped save was one of the suspects.

If given the chance, she says she’d do it all over again.

The suspect she helped is the 23-year-old from Raytown, Lyndell Mays, facing four charges related to the shooting. That was unknown to people in the area where the shooting happened, but Dean said she had her suspicions as she gave first aid.

Leaving the rally, she heard more than a dozen shots. She rushed over to a man who was unattended and appeared to be suffering from bullet wounds to his chest and groin.

Applying pressure with her sweatshirt, she didn’t know at the time that the man was Mays, now charged with second-degree felony murder and armed criminal action, among other charges.

Prosecutors say his gun is not the one used to kill Lisa Lopez Galvin but that he was the first to draw his weapon.

“I didn’t witness exactly what had happened. When the gun was laying there, I think that possibility became more of a probability,” Dean said.

“I think I had every opportunity to walk away if that’s what I felt like I needed to do,” Dean said.

“She risked her entire life to stop and help these people. She’s a true hero,” Kayleigh Clements, Dean’s cousin, said.

“Leaving somebody bleeding out and possibly dying is not what I could live with for myself. So if I had to do it again, I would have helped him,” Dean said.

Emergency crews took over once they arrived, and Dean said she returned to her hotel, threw out her bloody clothes, and took the three-hour drive back to Wichita.

She said she checked in with Mays’ sister to see if he survived back when she still didn’t know who he was.

Learning more information, she said it’s been hard.

“I wish none of it would have ever happened. And again, just knowing what started the whole altercation is pretty unsettling and something I’ll never understand. And trying to make sense of it, I think, is just going to drive me crazy,” Dean said.

Dean also said she used to work as a nurse in a correctional facility, saying she avoided looking up people’s charges. So she has thought about similar situations before.