In the wake of a devastating shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival, one carpenter felt each of the 58 victims should be honoured individually.
On October 1, Stephen Paddock, 64, killed at least 58 people and injured at least 500 after firing on a crowd of 22,000 at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. Greg Zanis, a carpenter from Aurora, Ill., set up 58 crosses on the south end of the Las Vegas strip to commemorate the lives lost in the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.
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Local news reports state that Zanis drove over 1,800 miles with the crosses. WGN9 reports that Zanis has made over 20,000 crosses throughout his career for homicide and shooting victims, though this is the largest installation he’s ever made at once.
“This row of crosses will show the severity of what really happened there. More so than numbers and pictures in the paper,” he told WGN9.
BuzzFeed reports that Zanis wrote a victim’s name on every cross and brought Stars of David for Jewish victims. A few of the crosses have pictures of victims mounted to them, and each one will feature a heart.
Vigils for the victims have been held in the area every evening since the shooting.
Zanis is originally known for erecting 15 crosses following the late 1990s Columbine school shootings, to commemorate the individuals killed that day. Zanis continued the tradition for several mass shootings in the U.S. in the following decades — such as Sandy Hook, Colorado and Orlando — and the movement has since evolved into the nonprofit Crosses for Losses.
The Chicago Tribune reports that Zanis received the identities of those killed in Las Vegas and planned to take 65 crosses with him on the trip. He reportedly always takes extra in case the death toll rises.
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