Three Missouri men have been charged with federal counts related to the illegal purchase of high-powered rifles and guns with extended magazines after last month’s shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade and rally left one person dead, roughly two dozen others injured and sent hundreds of people scrambling for cover, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Court documents unsealed Wednesday said 12 people brandished firearms and at least six people fired weapons at the Feb. 14 rally, which drew an estimated 1 million people to downtown Kansas City. The guns found at the scene included at least two AR-15-style rifles, court documents said. And U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore said in a news release that at least two of the guns recovered from the scene were illegally purchased.
The federal charges come three weeks after state authorities charged two other men, Lyndell Mays and Dominic Miller, with second-degree murder and several weapons counts for the shootings. Authorities also last month detained two juveniles on gun-related and resisting arrest charges. Police said the shooting happened when one group of people confronted another for staring at them.
Authorities have said a bullet from Miller’s gun killed Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was in a nearby crowd of people watching the rally. She was a mother of two and the host of a local radio program called “Taste of Tejano.” The people injured range in age from 8 to 47, according to police.
Named in the new federal charges were 22-year-old Fedo Antonia Manning, Ronnel Dewayne Williams Jr., 21, and Chaelyn Hendrick Groves, 19, all from Kansas City. Manning is charged with one count each of conspiracy to traffic firearms and engaging in firearm sales without a license, and 10 counts of making a false statement on a federal form. Williams and Groves are charged with making false statements in the acquisition of firearms, and lying to a federal agent.
According to online court records, Manning made his initial appearance Wednesday. He did not have an attorney listed, but asked that one be appointed for him. The online court record for Williams and Groves also did not list any attorneys to comment on their behalf.
A phone call to the federal public defender’s office in Kansas City on Wednesday went unanswered.
The new complaints made public Wednesday do not allege that the men were among the shooters. Instead, they are accused of involvement in straw purchases and trafficking firearms.
“Stopping straw buyers and preventing illegal firearms trafficking is our first line of defense against gun violence,” Moore said in the news release.
Federal prosecutors said that one weapon recovered at the rally scene was an Anderson Manufacturing AM-15 .223-caliber pistol, found along a wall with a backpack next to two AR-15-style firearms and a backpack. The release said the firearm was in the “fire” position with 26 rounds in a magazine capable of holding 30 rounds — meaning some rounds may have been fired from it.
The affidavit stated that Manning bought the AM-15 from a gun store in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a Kansas City suburb, on Aug. 7, 2022. It accuses him of illegally trafficking dozens of firearms, including many AM-15s.
Also recovered at the scene was a Stag Arms 300-caliber pistol that the complaint said was purchased by Williams during a gun show in November. Prosecutors say Williams bought the gun for Groves, who accompanied him to the show but was too young to legally purchase a gun for himself.
Prosecutors say Manning and Williams also bought firearm receivers, gun parts also known as frames that can be built into complete weapons by adding other, sometimes non-regulated components.
The complaint said Manning was the straw buyer of guns later sold to a confidential informant in a separate investigation.
___ Jim Salter in St. Louis and Lindsey Whitehurst in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
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