KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A man from Kansas, Denton Loudermill Jr. of Olathe, has passed away after being wrongly accused of participating in the shooting at a rally celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl win last year, according to his attorney.
Loudermill was briefly detained but never faced charges in connection to the incident. He went on to file lawsuits against three Republican Missouri state senators and a Tennessee congressman for sharing social media posts that wrongly implicated him in the shooting.
Those cases were all dismissed, largely on jurisdictional issues.
Attorney LaRonna Lassiter Saunders confirmed Loudermill’s death in a statement Friday but gave no details on the circumstances. Loudermill was 49.
The attorney stated, “More information will be shared in due course. However, at this time, we respectfully request that the family’s privacy be respected as they mourn this significant loss.”
The Feb. 14, 2024, shooting outside Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, killed a well-known DJ and injured more than 20 others, many of them children.
Loudermill’s lawsuits said he froze when the gunfire erupted, standing in the middle of the chaos so long that police had put up crime scene tape by the time he finally started to walked away. As he tried to leave, officers stopped him and told him he was moving “too slow.” They handcuffed him and put him on a curb, where people began taking pictures and posting them on social media, the lawsuits said.
Loudermill ultimately was led away and told he was free to go. But soon posts began appearing on X that included a picture of Loudermill, a car wash employee who was born and raised in the U.S. The posts called him an “illegal alien” and a “shooter,” even though he had no involvement, the lawsuits said.
Three men were ultimately charged with murder, and several other people faced other charges stemming from the shootings, which authorities said stemmed from a dispute between two groups of people.
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Lassiter Saunders said she would continue fighting to clear Loudermill’s name.
“While the family takes this time to mourn, we want to make it clear that this is not over. Mr. Loudermill should not have spent his final days burdened with stress and chasing down a lie that went viral due to the careless and heartless actions of a Congressman, Missouri senators, and social media influencers, who couldn’t be bothered to verify the truth before destroying a man’s life.
“If you thought we were determined before, you haven’t seen anything yet!” she concluded.
The video in the player above is from a previous report.
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