A decade after San Bernardino mass shooting, community members continue to honor victims
A decade after the San Bernardino mass shooting left 14 people dead and 22 wounded, the community continues to grapple with the loss and tragedy by honoring the victims and their families.
The community in San Bernardino will hold memorial events on Tuesday for the men and women who lost their lives, but also to remember the heroic acts of the first responders who risked their lives that day and commemorate the victims who survived the horrific attack. Cal State University of San Bernardino's College of Natural Sciences will host the annual Day of Remembrance from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Peace Garden and the county will also be holding a private event for victims' families.
The deadly shooting took place in the morning hours of Dec. 2, 2015, at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. A man and a woman identified as restaurant inspector Syed Rizwan Farook, a U.S. citizen, and his Pakistan-born wife, Tashfeen Malik, walked into the center and opened fire on a group of employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.
The suspects were also killed in a gun battle with police shortly after the rampage.
At the time, former Lt. Mike Madden of the San Bernardino Police Department said the incident was a "tragedy that I've never experienced in my career and that I don't think most officers do."
According to CBS News, at the time, law enforcement officials believed Farook and Marquez had allegedly reconfigured the guns to be more powerful after buying them legally in California.
Following the shooting, then Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino County and awarded the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor to several first responders from that day. Former President Barack Obama also visited San Bernardino a few days after the shooting and spoke with survivors and their families.
In 2022, the December 2 Memorial Committee unveiled the "Curtain of Courage Memorial." The memorial was designed by world-renowned landscape architect and artist Walter Hood and was created to be a celebration of life.
The memorial consists of 14 individual bronze-colored alcoves "shaped like protective curtains along the Government Center's east promenade," San Bernardino County officials said.
"The families of the victims selected the color of glass for each alcove and personalized the phrase on each bench inside each of the alcoves," the county's website said.
