It happened more than six years ago, but the events inside an Aurora movie theater during the early morning hours of July 20, 2012 are something that hundreds of people forever bound together by tragedy will never forget.
The memorial outside of the Aurora Municipal Center isn’t just for the 13 people killed (one of them, an unborn child). It also isn’t just for the 70 people injured, or their countless friends and family members.
It’s a place for meditation and reflection in the decades to come.
“This memorial should be a standalone piece of world class art,” said Douwe Blumberg, the sculptor behind the 83 cranes that will officially be dedicated on Friday for the 7/20 memorial. “It should not require knowledge of July 20.”
Blumberg, Aurora officials, survivors who were in the theater that night and family members of those who did not make it out alive held a news conference on Thursday morning.
One of them, Kaylan Bailey, was only 12 when she attended a midnight showing of the “Dark Knight Rises” with her cousin Jamison, his girlfriend Ashley Moser and her 6-year-old daughter Veronica Moser-Sullivan.
Veronica was the youngest victim of the shooting. Ashley Moser also lost her unborn child.
Bailey said she’s glad they’re acknowledging “baby toes Moser” in the garden … and said the six years since the shooting have brought some sense of healing.
“Up until now, I could only talk about the pain I felt, and that’s how I felt for the past five years,” Bailey said. “I’m feeling the transition from pain to acceptance.”
The memorial garden was funded by donations gathered by the 7/20 Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit made to honor those whose lives were lost or changed by the Aurora theater shooting.
The memorial’s official dedication is slated for Friday at 6:30 p.m.
For more information or to donate to this project: 7-20memorial.org
7/20 MEMORIAL | Aurora theater shooting memorial almost finished
