With the Monterey Park community still grieving after the Jan. 21 mass shooting that killed 11 people and injured 9 others, city officials have begun looking into a permanent structure to memorialize the victims.
Details were scant on what such a memorial might look like or where it would go, but “we are researching all options,” Monterey Park City Manager Ron Bow said in an email on Thursday, Feb. 2.
Mayor Pro Tem Thomas Wong said the city’s immediate focus is still on supporting the victims, but officials have been fielding interest from locals and artists around the world about a possible memorial.
With mass shootings dotting the nation, Monterey Park would join cities and towns across the country that have erected permanent memorials to remember their dead.
In Uvalde, Texas, where last May a gunman killed 19 students and two students, the Uvalde City Council in August approved a permanent memorial for its town square. It was the town square where many mourners had flocked to pay their respects. The Monterey Park massacre was the worst mass shooting since Uvalde.
A little more than 50 miles east of Monterey Park, in San Bernardino, it was just last year when a memorial called the “The Curtain of Courage” was unveiled at the site where 14 were gunned down in a terror attack.
A growing collection of semi-permanent monuments continue to attract mourners outside the still closed Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, nearly two weeks since the massacre.
Standing back from the well-wishers and taking in the scene on Wednesday, Jenny Chu, who lost two friends in the carnage, gave lessons on proper dance hall etiquette.
“Always change partners,” she said. “Don’t be that couple that sticks by themselves.”
Having danced at the Star Ballroom studio for the past decade, Chu is well versed in the moves that turn strangers into friends.
She said the studio was a diverse community hub that drew people from across cultures, all connected through…
Read the full article here
