The forgotten vegas mass shooting
A forgotten mass shooting
A gunman murdered nearly 60 people on October 1, 2017 by raining gunfire onto the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. This shooting both scarred the city of Las Vegas as well as brought out the best of the community, seen in hours-long waits to donate blood and the donation of millions of dollars from local citizens to help victims of the horrific massacre.
For some residents of Las Vegas, the 1 October shooting surfaced disturbing memories of another mass shooting in Las Vegas that occurred almost 20 years earlier that is largely forgotten except by those most closely impacted by the event. Fortunately for you reader, this author is one of those that people.
Early on the morning of June 14, 1999, a man that lived on the other side of the school across the street from my house donned an olive-green army jacket and slipped a 12-gauge shotgun underneath.The man, Zane Floyd, a 26-year-old unemployed veteran, made the short walk of a few blocks to the Albertson’s supermarket located at the center of a shopping center shortly after 5:00 a.m.
early morning horror
Surveillance footage later emerged showing Floyd chasing his last victim, Zachary Emenegger, before shooting him in the back and then once more as he lie on the ground. Emenegger was severely wounded but alive and he decided his best option was to play dead. Floyd wandered the store before returning to the motionless Emenegger, pausing a moment before saying “Yeah, you’re dead.”
Having shot everyone he could find in the store, Floyd tried to flee on foot, but the police had the building surrounded. A standoff ensued as Floyd stood outside the store with a gun to his head, threatening to kill himself. The police eventually talked him into surrendering and Floyd was eventually convicted of four counts of murder as well as the rape of an exotic dancer he committed earlier that morning. He currently sits on Nevada’s death row awaiting execution.
This terrible incident is used by law enforcement when educating the public on how to respond to a mass shooting incident. Experts recommend hiding, fighting, or running from an attacker, but if those aren’t options, the best tactic is playing dead to survive, like Emenegger did.
returning to the site of a massacre
For folks that grew up in Vegas the city feels like a small town in many respects. For instance, I lived almost the entirety of my first 20 years of life living near the intersection of Sahara and Valley View, about 2 miles from the Strip and Downtown. I took my __ bicycle the short ride to that very Albertson’s at least once a week for years to rent movies in the value-movie section. I also visited that Albertson’s weekly with my grandparents to pick up groceries.
It is difficult to describe the eerie mixture of sadness and dread that comes with visiting a familiar place after a mass shooting. The Albertson’s down the street from my house was closed for about a week after Floyd went on his shooting spree. The anxiety in my chest as I accompanied my grandmother into the store was the same type one gets approaching the edge of a high diving board before taking a leap.
The news had replayed the images the past week of security camera footage of the produce section of Albertson’s that I had walked through hundreds of times before. Only the familiar setting was marred by images of Floyd chasing a young store employee around a fruit display as he fired shotgun rounds into the young man.
That entire first trip to Albertson’s after the shooting, as I made my way up and down the aisles, it was impossible to stop wondering whether a terrified employee had run this way to escape Floyd or whether someone had been murdered where I was standing.