A Chicago man drove all the way to Las Vegas to honor the lives lost during Sunday night’s horrific shooting at a country music festival.
Greg Zanis drove 1,800 miles to place 59 crosses outside the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign, one for each of the people killed during the assault. The crosses include the victims’ photos, names and large red hearts, WABC-TV reported.
Zanis, a carpenter from Aurora, Illinois, has also included Stars of David for Jewish victims.
“Today I’m making 59 crosses,” he told WGN-TV before he left on Tuesday. “I originally set out to make 50, so this morning, I made 9 more.”
And, as it turns out, Zanis has a history of creating these memorials, as he went to Littleton, Colorado, Newtown, Connecticut and Orlando, Florida, to do the same after past shootings unfolded in those cities.
Chicago man drives to Las Vegas to place 58 crosses in honor of #LasVegasShooting victims https://t.co/BG0kB7QDCX pic.twitter.com/fXczhqNt3W
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) October 6, 2017
Zanis told WGN-TV that he’s hoping to offer hope to people who have lost so much as well as a dose of reality.
“This row of crosses will show the severity of what really happened there,” he said. “More so than numbers and pictures in the paper.”
A GoFundMe that Zanis put together to raise $5,000 to help the cross effort has already brought in nearly $4,000.