Fifty-eight towering, candlelike beams will cast a blanket of warm light on visitors in the design concept chosen Wednesday at an emotional meeting of a committee tasked with creating a permanent memorial at the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The number 58 represents the toll of people who were killed in the Las Vegas Strip massacre in October 2017, when a gunman opened fire from a high-rise suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel, targeting people at a country music festival below. Two people who initially survived died in subsequent years from causes that were attributed to the gunshot wounds they suffered.
