10-year-old struck by bullet at Chiefs parade says surviving shooting was a 'miracle'

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A 10-year-old boy who was shot at the Kansas City Chiefs victory rally this week said a bullet missed his lungs by centimeters and it's a “miracle” he’s alive.

Samuel Arellano was celebrating the team's Super Bowl win at the parade Wednesday with his grandfather, uncle and cousin when the fun spiraled into chaos. A fight broke out just after the rally ended, and a crowd began rushing toward the fifth grader, he said Friday.

What happened next is a bit of blur, Samuel said. He remembers he moved toward a trash can — something he learned at active-shooting training at school — and two or three shots rang out as he was pushed to the ground and trampled.

The next thing he could recall was a sharp pain on his right side: “Like something burned. Like a knife burn with the lighter, like someone stabbed me,” he said.

But the pain was not overwhelming and he had no visible blood on the red Patrick Mahomes jersey he was wearing, Samuel said.

His family returned home 20 minutes after the shooting and they later discovered a bullet wound once he took off his shirt.

Samuel said seeing the injury brought his family to tears, but he tried to stay tough.

“If I looked at it, I know I was going to cry — a lot,” he said.

However, the boy was moved to tears when doctors told him he narrowly escaped serious injury because the bullet, which struck a bone, missed his lungs by centimeters.

“I started crying. But like, I was kind of happy because if it hit my lungs, it would have been a different situation.”

The near miss was a “miracle,” Samuel said.

Aby Arellano, 34, said that when she saw her youngest child's gunshot wound, she felt something no mother, especially of a young child, is prepared for.

“It’s a pain I don’t