Statue for shooting victims damaged in Las Vegas Healing Garden
The “Love and Courage” statue that stands as a tribute to the victims of the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting has been damaged, and its co-creator said Friday that he believes human forces are responsible.
“It would have been impossible for it to have been the weather,” Bobby Jacobs said. “You can see that it was split perfectly — two exact pieces — and you only can do that if you put in a tool on the top and split it.”
Jacobs and his wife, Elizabeth Bryan-Jacobs, created and donated the nearly 3,000-pound, 6-foot-tall statue as a tribute to the 58 people who died in Oct. 1, 2017, shooting. Installation of the statue at the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden began in September, and it was dedicated on Oct. 1.
But sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the statue was cracked, according to emails Jacobs provided to the Review-Journal sent between himself and Tom Perrigo, executive director of community development and chief sustainability officer for the city of Las Vegas.
In the emails, Perrigo said he believed the wind, cold weather and rain in the valley this week caused the damage to the statues, while Jacobs said a person had to have done the damage.
Jacobs said Friday evening he has similar wing statues installed outdoors in the U.S., with some facing New England weather that have not experienced damage.
Perrigo did not immediately return requests for comment Friday evening. Get Outdoors Nevada, which helps manage the garden, could also not be reached for comment Friday evening.
Diana Paul, a city spokeswoman said Friday night that officials “were still trying to figure out exactly what happened,” but that the current focus is removing the damaged wings.
“They need to be removed because they’re a safety hazard,” she said, adding that officials were working with Jacobs to move the sculpture and determine how it was damaged.
“They know who did it; I’m just waiting for them to stand up and address it,” Jacobs said, referencing the city but declining to say whom he suspects damaged the statue. “This is the second time the person has done something.”
In the email chain that started in October between the two men, which Jacobs also sent to Mayor Carolyn Goodman, Jacobs asked about replacing a plaque on the statue that said “Love and Courage” and “the artist’s name.”
Jacobs said in an email addressed to Goodman that the nameplate on the sculpture was “purposefully chiseled out of the sculpture base” before its dedication on Oct. 1.
“Had anyone let us know about a policy having to do with names or the words ‘donated by’ we would have gladly made the plaque with only the name of the sculpture, which is ‘Love and Courage’ and the artist’s name, which is how all art is displayed even in situations like this,” Jacobs wrote in the email.
Perrigo said in a follow-up email that he was working to find options to move the sculpture to a “highly visible location” and display the “name of the artist.”
Jacobs said Friday that he would like to move the sculpture, possibly to private property that the public would have access to.
“I just don’t want to deal with this again,” he said.
He said he doesn’t know why anyone would want to hurt the angel-wings statue, which he emphasized was carved with the initials of the 58 people killed in the shooting.
“I told the mayor today that this person is extreme evil,” Jacobs said. “In my head, I can’t get a grip on why someone would do it.”
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.