How Do You Memorialize The Monterey Park Mass Shooting?

For every community mourning a mass shooting, a question invariably arises, after the police barricades are gone and the bouquets have withered.

How to honor those killed in a lasting way? How to add a measure of healing and closure?

That’s the conversation Monterey Park is starting to have nearly eight months after a gunman killed 11 people at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in January, marking the deadliest massacre in Los Angeles County history.

The gunman walked into the studio and opened fire, killing 11. The victims were mostly men and women in their 60s and 70s who were there to enjoy night of ballroom dance at the start of the Lunar New Year. The 72-year-old gunman was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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The impact of the shooting in the country’s first Asian-majority city reverberated far beyond its Los Angeles County borders and the San Gabriel Valley. The shock would be compounded just a few days later, with the attack on Asian and Latino farmworkers in Half Moon Bay.

People gathered in front of Monterey Park City Hall for a candlelight vigil for the victims of the mass shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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As the one-year anniversary of the shooting in Monterey Park looms, the City Council last week discussed forming a memorial committee.

“We understand that the community is interested in what is going to be done long-term to establish a memorial,” Diana Garcia, the interim assistant city manager, told LAist. “We thought, ‘Let's start talking about this.’”

Immediately after the Jan. 21 shooting, the city went into triage mode to help survivors and victims’ families and to offer mental health support to residents traumatized by the violence, which critically injured nine people.

Gun control became a dominant focus in Monterey Park, where President Biden in March gave an address on federal initiatives to deter mass shootings. Local officials, meanwhile, supported state bills to improve gun safety and crafted their own ordinances, including a ban on firearms on city property.

Now the council is taking first steps to build a permanent memorial by creating a panel tasked with leading the project, which could include fundraising and site selection.

Who gets a say?

City officials said they would have to consider who to include in the committee, with some saying it was important to look outside the city: Monterey Park holds a special place in the hearts not just of long-time residents but a diaspora that grew up outside the San Gabriel Valley.

“I mean, this event took place in our city,” council member Vinh Ngo said during last week’s council meeting. But, “the victims and the stakeholders involved, most of them -- majority of them -- don't live in the city.”

City staff has also begun researching how other communities have created memorials in response to mass shootings.

The timeline for memorial completion varied greatly among the projects, with the Sandy Hook memorial opening almost a full decade after the 2012 shooting in Newton, Conn.

Budgets also ranged widely from tens of thousands of dollars to build a memorial to victims of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech to more than $10 million budgeted for the memorial marking the 2016 PULSE Club shooting in Orlando, Fla., where project coordinators are embroiled in financial scandal.

Where to build it?

In Monterey Park, questions have arisen over where to locate a memorial. The Star Ballroom Dance Studio, which is located in a small strip mall, has stayed closed since the shooting, with the owner saying earlier this year she doubted she would ever re-open.

Council member Henry Lo raised the possibility of building a memorial at the site of the shooting.

“I know that it’s private property, but given it was the site of the shooting, it is somewhat sacred ground,” Lo said.

But Ngo questioned the feasibility of building on private land, saying that a memorial on city property would assure easy access to a public wanting to pay tribute to the victims.

Mayor Pro Tem Thomas Wong said there were many questions to be answered, and he didn’t want to rush through the undertaking.

“This is not something that's gonna get done in the next six months, and even probably not in the next year,” Wong said.

Wong said he wanted “an outreach-intensive process,” heavy on input from the victims and their families and the wider community still feeling the impact of the shooting.

Mental health resources