Las Vegas, Still in Shock, Begins Process of Grieving, Healing

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he Rev. Paul Goulet of the International Church of Las Vegas joined city and state leaders, other clergy and hundreds of other Las Vegans at City Hall for an evening vigil Monday remembering the victims of Sunday night's mass shooting.

He summoned the raw emotion of the day.

“Dear God, can we just cry out to you for our city?” Goulet bellowed, his voice cracking with sorrow.

“Touch these broken lives! And we pray for this.”

Members of Victory Outreach youth ministry lifted their voices for the victims whose names we are still learning, filling the evening with rousing Gospel-tinged hymns.

At least half a dozen of those killed came from the Central Valley and Southern California.

“Los Angeles is not far from here, San Diego is not far,” said Goulet's fellow pastor at ICLV, the Rev. Pasqual Urrabazo.

He spent all day at the Las Vegas Convention Center trying to help locals and out-of-towners connect with missing loved ones, not knowing if they were dead, wounded or simply unable to communicate by phone or electronically.

“We left our team there [at the convention center] and they are there right now,” said Urrabazo, “because there’s another wave of family members coming and we’re gonna be there to help them, whatever they need.”

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oving around the Las Vegas Strip, it would be hard to tell anything was amiss if you didn’t know. The Strip was bustling with vehicle and pedestrian traffic as usual.

Some casinos had dimmed their glow out of respect for the victims, and many venues canceled scheduled performances. As darkness fell, City Hall’s sleek glass exterior was lit up in red, white and blue.

“There are people that come here from all over the world, who come for the entertainment,” said 68-year-old James Katzen, wearing an orange T-shirt that read, "Enough Gun Violence."

He recently campaigned to tighten background checks for Nevada gun purchasers. Now he simply wanted to join those grieving for the hundreds murdered and wounded and the thousands traumatized.

“And I’m sorry that they’ll be going home and this’ll be their only memory of Las Vegas, because I love this town,” Katzen said.

“And we definitely need to do something about it never happening again.”