A Kansas City Chiefs fan who went viral after he was mistakenly identified as a gunman in a fatal Super Bowl parade shooting has sued a congressman for calling him an illegal immigrant and fingering him as a suspect on social media.
Denton Eugene Loudermill Jr. hit Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) with a federal lawsuit for two posts on X — in the days after the deadly Feb. 14 incident in Kansas City, Missouri — featuring a photo of Loudermill in cuffs with the caption, “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal alien.”
Loudermill, a car wash employee who lives in Olathe, Kansas, was photographed by bystanders surrounded by police while he was temporarily put in handcuffs in the moments after the violence.
The image, of Loudermill wearing a red sweatsuit, was included in Burchett’s X posts from the day after the shooting and in another one from Feb. 18 — which together amassed millions of views and were reposted tens of thousands of times, Loudermill’s Kansas federal lawsuit from Monday charges.
The politician, a day later on Feb. 19, followed up on X, saying he’d taken the prior two posts down after he found out he’d misidentified Loudermill as a gunman.
“This was based on multiple, incorrect news reports,” Burchett said in the follow-up post.
“At no time was [Loudermill] an ‘alien,’ an ‘illegal alien,’ nor a ‘shooter’ and the assertions to the contrary were false and were circulated widely among” Burchett’s followers, later to be “reposted and widely circulated to more than one million people around the world,” reads the suit, first reported by Law & Crime.
Loudermill, who had been enjoying the festivities with several drinks that day, was detained for intoxication and for not leaving the crime scene quickly enough, but he was released some 10 minutes later and was never charged with or cited for any crime, the suit says.
Thanks to Burchett’s posts, Loudermill has received death threats and suffered “humiliation” and “embarrassment,” the court papers say.
He’s also experienced “periods of anxiety, agitation, and sleep disruption,” the documents claim.
Loudermill, a father, brought a claim of invasion of privacy against Burchett and is seeking unspecified damages.
Burchett’s actions were “willful, wanton, reckless, and malicious, and further, showed a complete and deliberate indifference to, and conscious disregard for, the rights of [Loudermill],” the papers allege.
“I just want to clear my name that I had nothing to do with anything,” Loudermill said at a press conference with his lawyer on Feb. 19.
Lyndell Mays, 23, and Dominic Miller, 18, were eventually arrested and charged with murder in the shooting that killed local DJ and mom of two Lisa Lopez-Galvan and injured more than 20 others, of whom 11 were kids.
Mays and Miller had been firing at each other after getting into an argument. Mays sustained nine gunshot wounds and both men were hospitalized.
Two other minors were arrested for gun charges and resisting arrest during the melee.
A spokesperson for Burchett said: “Our office does not comment on pending or active litigation.”
