Sixth anniversary of shooting Sunday
Sunday is the sixth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, when a gunman took the lives of 49 people at a nightclub just south of downtown Orlando.
The shooting at the Pulse took place in Orange County, but its tragic impacts were felt here in Osceola.
Amanda Alvear was 25 at the time and died within those walls on June 12, 2016, while simply trying to have a good time on a weekend at Latin Night at a club. She lived in Davenport at the time, and her family members live in Kissimmee.
Luis Conde and Juan Rivera Velasquez had been together for 14 years after meeting in Puerto Rico. They moved to the area and, for seven years, operated the Alta Peluqueria D’Magazine beauty salon on Osceola Parkway in Kissimmee, which became a makeshift shrine to them in the days and weeks after the shooting. Months later, Velazquez’s family opened a new salon, named D’Magazine by Juan P., on Central Florida Parkway in south Orlando, keeping a tribute to Velasquez and Conde alive.
On the anniversary of the shooting, public tributes will take place, including at the Orange County Regional Historical Center on Central Boulevard in downtown Orlando. Crosses honoring all 49 victims will be on display through the weekend (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday) at the museum, which is offering free admission during this time.)
The crosses were designed by Greg Zanis, an Illinois carpenter who began building them in honor of those killed in the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, and since that time built and delivered over 26,000 crosses to sites of mass shootings and natural disasters across the United States before passing away due to cancer in 2020. They were displayed at Pulse in the days after the shooting, and were signed by friends at family at that time. In the exhibit, the crosses remain exactly as they were from 2016.
The crosses are grouped by those who attended Pulse together that night, so the crosses for Conde and Velasquez, and Alvear and her friend Mercedez Flores, sit side-by-side.
“Anybody who was there at the club together, we always keep their items together,” said history center Curator Jeremy Hileman. “We keep the exhibit monitored, not that we think people would have ill intentions, but from a preservation standpoint. The crosses are very fragile.”
