Linus Li
Marketing Director
A memorial event will be held at 6:00 p.m. today at People’s Park in Isla Vista to “stand in solidarity” with the victims of a mass shooting Sunday night in Las Vegas. As of press time, at least 58 people died, and 500 more were injured at a country music festival.
The event on Facebook is hosted by I.V. Community Services District Board Directors Ethan Bertrand and Spencer Brandt, as well as Diana Collins Puente, Isla Vista Community Advisor at the Associated Students of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“Please join your fellow Isla Vistans,” the event description reads, “to stand in solidarity with the people of Las Vegas, share your thoughts, and speak out against gun violence.”
Sunday night’s mass shooting took place at the Route 91 Harvest music festival outside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The death toll surpassed the 49 lives lost at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016, making it the deadliest shooting in modern United States history. The gunman, Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada was found dead at his hotel room in an apparent suicide.
“In I.V., we’re inextricably linked to tragedies of this nature,” Brandt told The Bottom Line on Monday. “There was a necessity for holding a space for people to come together and collectively mourn for the folks lost in Las Vegas — but also to heal as a community, because of the inextricable link between this sort of violence and what happened in I.V. in 2014.”