More than a week after a retired 64-year-old opened fire on a Las Vegas music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, the hotel is now forced to consider what will become of Stephen Paddock‘s infamous hotel room.
The windows in room 32-135 have been discreetly covered after Paddock broke several with a hammer on Sunday night before he killed 58 and injured hundreds more. But any further news about the room’s future plans has yet to be disclosed.
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Experts say the hotel’s problem is unique in the fact that Las Vegas is a place people go to vacation, relax and escape real-world problems.
“How do they navigate the fact that this happened in their hotel?” said Andrea Trapani, managing partner at Identity, a Detroit-area public relations firm. “A lot of challenging tough questions and decisions are going to be made.”
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While some experts suggest simply sealing up the room (or even entire floor) to avoid gawkers or those interested in the macabre setting, others suggest transforming it into a memorial or simply opening it for business again in order to help heal after the tragedy.
Venues where mass shootings have occurred in recent years have gone in a number of directions. Some have been dismantled completely, but others, like the San Bernardino community center where a husband and wife killed 14 people in 2015, reopened for business, with officials saying that getting back to work helping people was integral to healing.
The Orlando, Florida night club where a gunman killed 49 people in June 2016 remains closed, with the owner planning on turning it into a memorial.
Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were killed in 2012, was totally demolished and rebuilt four years later.
Some experts say Mandalay Bay should erect a memorial somewhere else in the hotel and organize a fundraiser for the victims and their families.
“The hotel was absolutely a victim as well, and by transforming some space into something that honors the victims, they could hopefully promote healing and actually some good,” Kim Miller, president of Florida-based Ink Link Marketing, told The New York Post.
While the resort hasn’t issued a statement on plans for the future, it would probably be a safe bet that room 32-125 would not simply re-open for business as usual.
