Vegas Strong: A Memorial for 1 October | Nevada Week

Nevada Week | Vegas Strong: A  Memorial for 1 October    

SEASON 4: EPISODE 12 | Airdate: 10/1/2021

Four years ago, On October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a concert on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more. The events of that day changed the city and the lives of thousands of people forever.

Las Vegas Metro Police officers raced to Mandalay Bay, where the shooter was firing from, to try to stop the carnage. The lessons learned from that night are being integrated into a new training center currently under construction.

The center is being spearheaded by Metro Police but it is really a community-wide project, said Andy Locher with Metro Police.

Locher said one lesson that was learned from October First is that first responders need to better understand what the other agencies are doing and what tactics, protocols and equipment they’re using. The new training facility will house police, fire, medical and federal agencies to build better cooperation in the field during an emergency.

Thousands of people from concert-goers to vendors were on the festival grounds the night of the shooting. Many of them are still dealing with injuries – physical and emotional – from that day.

Now, Clark County is in the process of creating a memorial as a place to remember the victims and a place for survivors to continue to heal.

Tennille Periera is the chairwoman of the memorial committee. She said the committee has received a lot of community input about the memorial. One of the most overwhelming themes of those comments is that people want the memorial to focus on who the victims were – not just their names and pictures – but information about who they were as people.

She also said people don’t want the memorial to focus on the gunman or the actual horror of that night.

Robert Fielden is an architect and a member of the memorial committee. He said besides just the people who died there were dozens of heroes that night who need to be recognized. Bystanders who stepped up to bring people to safety, cab and ride-share drivers who picked up the injured on the side of the road and took them to the hospital, and at the hospital, doctors, nurses and hospital staff who worked tirelessly to save lives. Fielden’s son is a doctor who was called in to help on Oct. 1.

Fielden said the committee has also looked at how other tragedies have been memorialized. From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero in New York City, how those memorials were handled could help Las Vegas make proper choices.

Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson’s district includes the part of the Strip where the shooting happened. He said there will need to be a balance between the emotional weight of the memorial and what the rest of the city is known for.

Gibson said the location of the memorial on the Route 91 Festival grounds is important. It will be on a two-acre site on the northwest part of the grounds. He said it will be away from the bustling part of the Strip but it will show visitors that our city took the incident seriously.

He hopes for any kind of funding to get the memorial built from grants to private-public partnerships.

Guests

• Tennille Pereira, Chairwoman, 1 October Memorial Committee
• Jim Gibson, Clark County Commissioner
• Robert Fielden, Architect, UNLV
• Cynthia Sanford, Registrar, Clark County Museum 
• Andy Locher, Las Vegas Metro Police

Resources

• Vegas Strong
• Clark County Museum 
• Las Vegas Community Healing Garden