By KEN RITTER, The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) — People who are healing and some still struggling gathered Friday to remember those who died and were injured during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history four years ago on the Las Vegas Strip.
“I was wounded. Those physical wounds have healed,” said Dee Ann Hyatt, whose daughter also was hurt and whose brother died in the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting. “But the lasting scars for our family remain.”
Hyatt spoke to several hundred people during a sunrise ceremony at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas.
Route 91 Harvest festival shooting survivors attend a remembrance ceremony at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas on Friday, Oct. 1, 2021, for the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)AP
She remembered her slain brother, Kurt von Tillow, a trucker from Northern California, before a screen at an outdoor amphitheater that displayed photos of the dead. Fifty-eight people were killed that night, and two others died later. More than 850 were injured.
A central Pennsylvania youth coach was among those killed.
“We continue to live the impact of all that happened that night, four years later,” Hyatt said. “People thrive and people struggle to live with the physical and mental pain, and our lives are forever changed.”
The morning memorial featured a song, “Four Years After,” sung by Matt Sky, that was composed for the anniversary by Mark R. Johnson and released with multi-Grammy award winner Alan Parsons.
The event was the first of several scheduled Friday in Las Vegas and elsewhere, including a livestream to California’s Ventura County hosted by a support group called “So Cal Route 91 Heals.” The group also planned a ceremony at a Thousand Oaks park.
Tennille Pereira, director of the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center, a Las Vegas program set up to support those affected by the shooting, noted that about 60% of tickets sold to the fateful concert were purchased by California residents.
Pereira also is chairwoman of a Clark County committee developing plans for a permanent memorial. She said next year’s fifth anniversary may feature a dedication of the memorial at a corner of the former concert venue across Las Vegas Boulevard from the Mandalay Bay resort. That’s where the shooter spent several days gathering an arsenal of assault-style rifles before breaking out windows of his 32nd floor suite and unleashing carnage.
Jill Winter of Nashville, Tennessee, remembers the nearly 10-minute barrage of rapid-fire gunshots into the open-air concert crowd.
Like many around her, Winter thought at first it was fireworks. Then people fell dead and wounded. Winter ducked for cover until police SWAT officers arrived and told her to run. She remembers yelling, “Make him stop! Make him stop!”
Winter, now 49, counsels others she calls the “Router family” who experienced the deadly night at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. “Router” sounds better than “survivor,” she explained.
“There is a lot of healing taking place,” she said in a telephone interview this week. “There are 22,000 of us that were there. That doesn’t even include other people that were impacted ... first responders, hospital employees, average citizens who were driving down the Strip. All those people and all those different stories.”
Sophia Ramirez, left, her mother, Kaycee Meeks, and her sister, Olivia Ramirez, right, attend the annual 1 October Remembrance Ceremony with their cousin, Kandis Gumbs, second right, at the Clark County Government Center on Friday, Oct. 1, 2021, in Las Vegas. Their cousin Christiana Duarte was killed during the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP). (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)AP
The gunman, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retired postal service worker, accountant and real estate investor who became a high-stakes casino video poker player, killed himself before police reached him. Local and federal investigators concluded he meticulously planned the attack and appeared to seek notoriety, but they said they could not identify a clear motive.
Authorities including police, elected and government officials and people involved with the resiliency center refuse now to use his name.
MGM Resorts International, owner of the hotel and the concert venue, is donating 2 acres for the memorial — just off the Strip at a spot near a church where people sought refuge and medical help during the shooting.
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‘Lasting scars’ remain 4 years after Las Vegas massacre, with 60 dead and hundreds hurt - PennLive
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