Dr. Erica Carney, who spent nearly eight years as Kansas City's emergency medical director, says in a new lawsuit that city and fire officials cut her office out of the response to the 2024 Chiefs Super Bowl rally shooting, then spent the next two years retaliating against her until she was fired at the end of 2025. The shooting on February 14, 2024, killed one person and wounded 22 others, and Carney says she received no direction or communication from the city or fire administration in its aftermath.
According to the lawsuit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court and first reported by the Kansas City Star, fire department administration excluded Carney's entire office from discussions about the shooting even though she was responsible for medical personnel assigned to major events. Then-Fire Chief Ross Grundyson did not contact her for two to three weeks afterward, the suit alleges. Around the same time, the health department removed Carney and her team's office space and forced them into a basement storage area, per the lawsuit.
Carney had served as Kansas City's emergency medical director from 2017 until her termination effective December 31, 2025, working under a contract between the city and University Health Physicians while reporting jointly to the city manager and the chairman of the department of emergency medicine. She is a faculty physician with University Health Physicians and the UMKC School of Medicine, where she holds a post as assistant professor, and she also works clinically as an emergency physician at University Health Truman Medical Center, according to the UMKC Directory. She previously served as Missouri's State Medical Director.
Planning Information Withheld Ahead of 2025 Rally
The pattern allegedly continued into the following year. Fire administration withheld planning information from Carney ahead of the 2025 Super Bowl rally, with the fire chief telling her the information was confidential, the lawsuit states. Carney says she oversaw the audit process for EMS calls and provided medical direction for the city's emergency medical system, including the Kansas City Fire Department, making her exclusion from that planning especially stark.
The lawsuit also details a credentialing crisis Carney says she tried to flag for years. She alleges license renewals and certifications lapsed for dozens of KCFD providers in 2025, and that Deputy Chief Laura Ragusa reported employees were providing care without valid credentials. Ragusa and Carney together recommended a competency audit, and Carney says she believed she was reporting regulatory violations, city policy violations, mismanagement, and a danger to public health and safety.
Those claims align closely with an internal audit Ragusa conducted in early 2025, which found KCFD crews complied with standard chest pain treatment protocols in only 13.2 percent of reviewed cases and adhered to recommended medical protocols overall less than 20 percent of the time, according to EMS1. The audit was reportedly launched after field supervisors raised patient care concerns. Ragusa resigned as deputy chief in June 2025 and had filed her own lawsuit against Kansas City in February 2025 alleging Grundyson discriminated against her after she reported allegedly illegal and unethical practices.
Blamed After a Paramedic's Killing
Carney's suit describes an especially painful chapter following the April 27, 2025 death of firefighter-paramedic Graham Hoffman, who was fatally stabbed inside an ambulance while transporting a patient near North Oak Trafficway and Missouri 152, as previously detailed in Hoodline’s coverage of an Arrowhead stair climb honoring Hoffman. Carney says she had trained Hoffman as a paramedic student and learned of his death through the news, rather than from the department. She also alleges her office was removed from all emergency text notifications within hours of the killing, and that union leadership blamed her office for his death.Patient Shanetta Bossell, who faces a first-degree murder charge in the case, was scheduled in September to undergo a psychiatric competency examination after her defense team signaled it would argue she lacked mental capacity, according to EMS1.
Carney's lawsuit says the city moved forward with her termination in 2025.
Termination and the Aftermath
The lawsuit centers on Carney's termination as medical director. Carney is seeking a jury trial and damages for lost compensation, benefits, pain and suffering, stress, humiliation, litigation costs, attorney fees, and other relief.
Erin Vernon, an attorney involved in the case, said the city should fix its emergency medical system instead of getting rid of a doctor who reports risks, the Kansas City Star reported. City officials Michael Hopkins and Jordan Berger both said they could not comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit also traces years of friction predating the rally shooting. Carney says she requested meetings in 2018 with Troy Schulte, Gary Reese, and union leadership to discuss continuing education failures and EMS oversight structure, and attended meetings on operational metrics in 2019. She alleges continuing education training was nearly nonexistent for her between January and July 2022, and that she pushed for better competency oversight, including polling comparable EMS agencies, which reportedly found KCFD among the two least-staffed departments for EMS education instructors per licensed health care personnel — at times just one or two instructors for the entire department.
The suit further alleges that in 2023, KCFD administration ordered billing staff to be mean to UMKC faculty, and that UMKC instructors experienced smoke blown in their faces, unsafe environments, and threats, prompting some to resign or be repositioned because of how they were treated by fire and city administration.
A Department Under Broader Strain
Carney's allegations land amid a wave of whistleblower litigation inside KCFD. Deputy Chief Nathan Dougan filed his own whistleblower lawsuit alleging administrative retaliation after reporting compensation policy abuses, following a $175,000 settlement he reached with the city in 2022, according to Wisevoter — a case Hoodline detailed in its report on the $900K payout tied to the viral Butker post. Grundyson retired after a tenure marked by multiple whistleblower lawsuits and discrimination complaints, and Kansas City appointed Craig Buckley as the new KCFD chief in January 2026, according to Firehouse Magazine.
