Judge tosses lawsuit against congressman over posts about man not involved in Chiefs' rally shooting

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge this week tossed a lawsuit against a Tennessee congressman who falsely accused a Kansas man of being involved in a deadly shooting at a rally celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl victory this year.

U.S. District Judge John Broomes ruled that the case should not be handled in Kansas, where plaintiff Denton Loudermill Jr. lives. U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican, has little connection to Kansas.

Loudermill's lawyer said in an email Thursday that they plan to refile the lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where Burchett was when he posted about Loudermill on social media.

Associated Press voice messages and emails to Burchett's attorneys were not immediately answered Thursday.

Loudermill was briefly handcuffed in the chaos that followed the Feb. 14 shooting outside the historic Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. A well-known DJ was killed and more than 20 others were injured, many of them children.

Loudermill's lawsuit said that 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 go under the tape 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 suit said.

Loudermill ultimately was led away from the area and told he was free to go.

The next day, a picture of Loudermill was posted on Burchett’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter. Above the picture were the words: “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

Loudermill was born and raised in the U.S.

A follow-up post by Burchett on Feb. 18 blamed incorrect news reports for the “illegal alien” identification. But the post, which was included in the lawsuit, still described the cuffed man seated on the curb as “one of the shooters.”

The suit said that Loudermill was never detained, cited or arrested in connection with the shooting. It stressed that he had no involvement and didn’t know any of the teens or young adults who had argued before gunfire erupted.

The suit described Loudermill as a car wash employee — not a public figure — and a “contributing member of his African-American family, a family with deep and long roots in his Kansas community.”

It said he received death threats and experienced periods of “anxiety, agitation, and sleep disruption.”