LAS VEGAS (AP) — A public panel planning a permanent Las Vegas memorial honoring victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history heard that there’s no perfect answer to how a tribute should look and feel.
“The goal is to provide comfort and hope and facilitate healing,” Anita Ahuja, manager of mass violence response for the California Victim Compensation Board, advised the 1 October Memorial Committee during its initial meeting Nov. 25.
The seven-member Clark County group is beginning to plan a tribute expressing the voices of victims, survivors, victims’ families and first responders affected by the 2017 shooting that killed 60 people and injured more than 850 at an open-air music festival.
The Las Vegas Sun reported the committee is seeking community input through public meetings, surveys and town halls to identify a location, size, design and funding for the memorial.
“We are not rushing this process,” Clark County Commission Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick said in a statement. “We want to create a memorial that is thoughtful and lasting, and we understand that the public discussion process may be emotional for people because many of us still live with 1 October every single day.”
Ahuja, an expert in mass violence education, has analyzed memorials that pay tribute to lives lost in other mass shootings and acts of terrorism, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing that killed at least 168 people in 1995 and the Orlando nightclub shooting that killed 49 people in 2016.
Those memorials included victims’ name inscriptions, a peaceful setting, seating for gatherings and a combination of art and nature, she said.
The Sept. 11 memorial was completed 10 years after the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed in 2001.
It took six years before the tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting came to fruition, and five years to build the memorial to victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, Ahuja told the committee.
The Las Vegas shooter killed himself before police blasted through the door of his 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay resort. Police and the FBI say that while it appeared he sought notoriety, they could not identify any “single or clear motivating factor” for the meticulously planned attack.
Ahuja said the architect selected to design the Las Vegas shooting memorial should be deeply entrenched in the community and understand how the tragedy affected it. Michael Arad, the architect who designed the Sept. 11 memorial, saw the south tower collapse outside his window, Ahuja said.