After one of the deadliest mass shootings in the city's history, Cincinnatians gathered for an afternoon vigil on Fountain Square to remember its victims today.
Cincinnati police estimate that 2,000 people showed up for the memorial.
Just a few hundred yards away yesterday, gunman Omar Enrique Santa-Perez killed three people and wounded two others before Cincinnati police shot and killed him. The vigil honored the victims as well as law enforcement officers who responded to the shootings.
Richard Newcomer, a 64-year-old construction superintendent for Gilbane Construction, Pruthvi Raj Kandepi, 25, a contractor for Maryland-based TEK Systems, and Luis Felipe Calderón, 48, a finance manager for Fifth-Third, were the victims killed in the shooting.
Whitney Austin, a 37-year-old from Louisville who works as a vice president for Fifth Third, took 12 bullets in the shooting, but survived. The other wounded victim, Brian Sarver, is a contractor for CBRE. He remained at University of Cincinnati Medical Center in stable condition the day after the shooting.
Among those in the crowd were family members of some of the victims.
A brief program featured remarks from Mayor John Cranley, Fifth Third Chairman and CEO Greg Carmichael and United Way President and CEO Michael Johnson, as well as prayers from pastors Ennis Tait from Church of the Living God and Crossroads Church's Brian Tome. Afterward, musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra played while a candle was lit in honor of the victims. Cincinnati City Councilmembers Tamaya Dennard, Amy Murray, Jeff Pastor, P.G. Sittenfeld and Wendell Young, along with Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus, were among the elected officials present.
"We are Cincinnati strong today because we stand on the shoulders of everyday people who build this city, who go to work, who do their jobs," Cranley said. "Whether they're like Luis Calderón from Florida, trying to make a better living for family, or someone from India here to live the American dream, or Richard, who built the buildings that we work in, let's give them applause for who they are and what they do."
