DAYTON, Ohio — Five years ago today, a gunman killed nine people and injured 27 more in Dayton's Historic Oregon District, an arts and entertainment district known for its bars.
Now, the city is honoring those killed in the Aug. 4, 2019 mass shooting with the unveiling of its "Seed of Life" memorial Sunday afternoon from 3-4 p.m.
The memorial was designed and created by local artists Terry Walker, Sierra Leone, Jes McMillan and James Pate, according to a report from WHIO. The new memorial will reside in a plaza next to the Trolley Stop in the Oregon District.
Those killed in the shooting included a new mother, a graduate student in a cancer care program, a native of the northeast African country of Eritrea and even the shooter's own sister.
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The memorial honors:
- Megan Betts, 22
- Monika Brichouse, 39
- Nicholas Cumer, 25
- Derrick Fudge, 57
- Thomas McNichols, 25
- Lois Oglesby, 27
- Saeed Saleh, 38
- Logan Turner, 30
- Beatrice Warren-Curtis, 36
The shooting happened in the early hours of Aug. 4, 2019. The gunman, 24-year-old Connor Stephen Betts, was shot and killed by police less than 30 seconds after he began shooting, Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl previously said.
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Former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley commended the city's first responders, and she said if officers hadn't responded "in less than a minute," many more might have died.
Whaley also said the incident marked the 250th mass shooting in America that year, happening just 13 hours after a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where 23 people were killed and 22 others were injured at a Walmart.
"Why does Dayton have to be the 250th mass shooting in America?" Mayor Nan Whaley asked. "El Paso was 249, Dayton is 250 this year."
It was also the deadliest mass shooting in Ohio since the "Easter Sunday Massacre" in Hamilton in 1975.
