03-03-2025
Fargo athletes and families caught up in shooting scare at cheer competition in Texas
Mar. 2—DALLAS — Cheer athletes and their families from the Fargo area attending a national competition in Texas over the weekend got caught up in a scare over a possible active shooter.
The incident happened at the National Cheerleaders Association All-Star National Championship in Dallas, an event featuring more than 1,700 teams from across the country, on Saturday, March 1.
Ultimately, it was not a shooting but a fight among two parents that led to a massive police response at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, local media reported.
During the fight, multiple large poles were knocked down, creating loud noises and sparking chaos among the crowds that had gathered.
Katie Brown, 13, of Fargo, was with her parents getting ready to compete for North Dakota Elite, a cheer club in Fargo.
"I didn't know that there wasn't a shooter, because I felt like I could actually hear the shots," she told The Forum.
Chad Brown said he, his wife and daughter had only been in the convention center for about 15 minutes early Saturday afternoon and were standing in a public area with Katie and a friend, tending to her hair before her competition.
Suddenly, the family turned around to see people running and wondered if they were rushing to meet a famous person at the competition.
"Then you can hear the screaming and you can hear the yelling, and you know it's not a good thing," Chad Brown said.
He said around that same time, a person in the crowd might have had a seizure.
"Somebody might have yelled 'seizure' out loud and people maybe heard 'shooter.' That's when everybody just got up, got caught up in the panic, and just started running," he said.
The family got separated for a while, but Katie and her friend managed to stay together.
"We ran through this disgusting muddy field with our white cheer shoes. We were both separated from our parents. I was the older one, so I just took care of her, I guess," Katie Brown said.
Her parents used Life 360 and an air tag attached to their daughter's cheer bag to track her down in 20 to 25 minutes at a parking lot where some attendees had gathered.
"Just being able to get connected to her was really all that mattered," Chad Brown said.
Mary Anderson, of Fargo, daughter Ava, 11, and one of Ava's friends were also among the crowd at the convention center Saturday afternoon in Dallas.
Ava Anderson also trains at North Dakota Elite but was not competing this weekend. Instead, she was there to get inspired by the older, higher level athletes taking part.
They had just gotten to their seats and watched one team perform when Anderson got an ominous message.
"I got a text message from her friend's mom that said active shooter, hide. I grabbed the girls," Anderson said.
They rushed to a closed section of the arena and found a men's bathroom to hide in.
Eventually, they could hear police and security officers on walkie-talkies, who escorted the three out and into a large room.
There, Anderson grabbed folding chairs and put them over the girls as a protective measure and anxiously waited.
When they were able to leave the convention center, they saw people who'd been hurt from being trampled. Local police said ten people were taken to hospitals for injuries ranging from bruises to fractures.
The cheer competition was shut down as soon as the incident began and it wasn't until later Saturday it was determined it would resume Sunday morning.
Anderson had nothing but praise for the coaches of North Dakota Elite, who determined they would compete on Sunday. Some teams elected to pull out of the competition.
"I could not be more proud of how they talked through things. They did everything they could do, and really took into consideration everybody's feelings," Anderson said.
When Katie Brown went back to the convention center with her North Dakota Elite teammates Sunday morning, she said it was an "almost traumatic" area to be in.
That feeling, however, quickly faded.
"I feel like competing made it better. It made it less scary," she said.
