With her casket near the front of the Redemptorist Catholic Church in Kansas City, Missouri, mourners some wearing Chiefs jerseys also heard a mariachi band play and sing.
Along with her husband and young adult son, Lopez-Galvan had joined an estimated crowd of 1 million people for the parade and rally. As the festivities concluded, a quarrel over what investigators characterized as the idea that people in one group were gazing at those in another group led to shooting.
Lopez-Galvan, a music lover who played at weddings, quinceañeras and an American Legion bar and grill, got caught in the middle of it. Everyone else survived.
Two individuals are charged in her killing, and two juveniles face gun charges. Her family responded to the allegations this week with a statement expressing thanks to police and prosecutors.
“Though it does not bring back our beloved Lisa, it is comforting,” the statement said.
Players and celebrities have reached out to her family. Pop singer Taylor Swift, who is regularly in the stands during Chiefs games since she is dating tight end Travis Kelce, contributed $100,000 to Lopez-Galvan’s family.
And because she was wearing a jersey of Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker at the celebration, he reacted to inquiries on social media asking help in finding a similar shirt — possibly so the mother of two might be laid to rest in it.
“While the family is mourning their loss and grappling with their numerous injuries, I will continue to pray for their healing and the repose of Lisa’s soul,” Butker said in a statement.
Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez worked with Lopez-Galvan for approximately a year at a local staffing firm but had known her since childhood. They described her as an extrovert and a firm Catholic who was loyal to her family, passionate about linking job seekers with work and eager to help anyone.
And, they claimed, working part time performing music allowed her to express her love as one of the area’s few Latina DJs.
“This senseless act has taken a beautiful person from her family and this KC Community,” the radio station KKFI-FM, where she was the co-host of a program called “Taste of Tejano,” stated in a statement.
Izurieta and Ramirez stated Lopez-Galvan’s Kansas City roots run deep. Her father created the city’s first mariachi ensemble, Mariachi Mexico, in the 1980s, they added, and the family is widely known and engaged in the Latino community. Her brother, Beto Lopez, is CEO of the Guadalupe Centers, which provides community services and runs charter schools for the Latino population.
Lopez-Galvan and her two daughters went to Bishop Miege, a Catholic high school in a suburb on the Kansas side, and she worked for years as a clerk in a police station there.
“This is another example of a real caring, real individual whose life was taken cruelly with a senseless act,” Beto Lopez said in an interview last week on ABC’s “Good Morning