Lisa Lopez-Galvan was a music lover and DJ within the Kansas City space who performed at weddings, quinceañeras and an American Legion bar and grill. She combined Tejano, Mexican and Spanish music with R&B and hip-hop, and volunteered as a number on a radio program.
She additionally was a faithful fan of Kansas City’s skilled sports activities groups and went along with her husband and younger grownup son to a parade Wednesday on the metropolis’s Union Station to have fun the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win. Afterward, her tight circle of mates discovered that she was killed, one in every of 23 individuals shot when the parade led to gunfire. Lopez-Galvan’s radio station, KKFI-FM, confirmed her dying.
Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez labored with Lopez-Galvan for a few yr at a neighborhood staffing agency however had identified her since childhood. They remembered her as an extrovert and a robust Catholic dedicated to her household who was enthusiastic about connecting job seekers with employment and able to assist anybody.
And, they mentioned, working half time enjoying music allowed the mom of two to share her ardour as one of many space’s few Latina DJs.
“She was definitely a pioneer. She knew how to get people going,” Ramirez mentioned Wednesday night. “She was always really good about shouting out people’s birthdays and just making people feel included and loved.”
The taking pictures victims ranged in age from 8 to 47, and half had been underneath 16, police mentioned. Izurieta mentioned her mates imagine Lopez-Galvan was shot within the chest and that her son was shot as properly. Three individuals had been detained and police mentioned the taking pictures appeared to stem from a dispute between a number of individuals.
Police recognized Lopez-Galvan as Elizabeth Galvan, 43, as an alternative of the identify she used on her Facebook web page and the identify utilized by her two mates and the radio station. Ramirez mentioned that as a DJ, she glided by Lisa G.
Izurieta despatched an electronic mail Wednesday evening to The AP saying, “Kansas City was on Top of The World and when all this occurred It Stopped.”
KKFI posted an announcement on its Facebook web page confirming Lopez-Galvan’s dying “with sincere sadness and an extremely heavy and broken heart.” The station urged individuals to contact police in the event that they imagine they noticed one thing.
The radio station additionally reposted a photograph that Lopez-Galvan had on the high of her Facebook web page, which seemed to be from a celebration. It confirmed Lopez-Galvan along with her household. Her husband was smiling, she was laughing, and their teenage daughter was between them. Her son was on the opposite facet of her, and so they had their arms round one another. Both youngsters had been laughing, too.
“This senseless act has taken a beautiful person from her family and this KC Community,” the radio station mentioned.
Izurieta and Ramirez mentioned Lopez-Galvan’s Kansas City roots run deep. Her father based the town’s first mariachi group, Mariachi Mexico, within the Nineteen Eighties, they mentioned, and the household is well-known and lively within the Latino group. Her brother, Beto Lopez, is the CEO of the Guadalupe Centers, which supplies group companies and runs constitution faculties for the Latino group.
Lopez-Galvan and her two youngsters went to Bishop Miege, a Catholic highschool in a suburb on the Kansas facet, and he or she labored for years as a clerk in a police division there.
“This is another example of a real loving, real human whose life was taken tragically with a senseless act,” Beto Lopez mentioned in an interview Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Izurieta mentioned working with staffing corporations — matching employees with mild manufacturing corporations — suited Lopez-Galvan properly. She managed a department workplace on the Kansas facet earlier than departing final fall for one more, related job.
When corporations sought employees, the staffing agency would give department places of work the job of discovering them. Lopez-Galvan was directing her employees however, Izurieta mentioned, “she would always jump in if she saw a heavy load of people coming in.”
Izurieta described Lopez-Galvan as having “a selfless heart” and “very giving.” She recalled that in 2022, a pregnant co-worker didn’t appear to have many mates within the space, so Lopez-Galvan organized a child bathe.
Now, family and friends are planning to prepare a vigil or memorial to honor Lopez-Galvan.
“She’s the type of person who would jump in front of a bullet for anybody — that would that would be Lisa,” Izurieta mentioned. ”We’re nonetheless attempting to determine what occurred, the way it occurred. But a few of us are considering she would have been that individual that might have jumped in entrance of anyone — you understand, simply to avoid wasting a life.”
(This story has not been edited by News18 employees and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)
