The city of Boulder encouraged people across the US to pay silent tribute and hold a candle-lighting ceremony on Saturday night in memory of the victims of a mass shooting at a local supermarket last week.
Officials in the Colorado city asked participants to observe 10 minutes of silence and leave a candle or light in front of their homes at 8pm to honour the 10 people who were killed in the attack at the King Soopers store.
The ceremonies had to be held privately in lieu of a mass gathering because of coronavirus restrictions.
Boulder resident Susan Siertoa said: "It's so important to remember the victims and do so with strong community. But right now we can't because of the pandemic.
"Normally, we can gather around and show people that we're in this together."
The 30-year-old former chief executive of a Colorado tech start-up will leave a candle by her front window for 10 days in honour of Danny Stong, 20, Neven Stanisic, 23, Rikki Olds, 25, Tralona Bartkowiak, 49, Teri Leiker, 51, Eric Talley, 51, Suzanne Fountain, 59, Kevin Mahoney, 61, Lynn Murray, 62, and Jody Waters, 65.
"There are lots of candles in windows on my street," she said. "It's comforting."
Another resident, David A Humdy, said the ceremonies were important as a way to reflect on what happened.
"People are never going to forget. People are going to use it as a political battleground fight. And I think, before that, I'd just like the loss of life to be acknowledged," he said.
The Boulder shootings occurred just days after another mass killing took place in Atlanta, where eight people were killed, six of them women of Asian descent.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here