Dec. 6 Remembrance:
Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Two years after the tragic shooting that killed three professors on UNLV’s campus, ways to honor the victims’ memory are beginning to take shape.
A lone shooter opened fire at the Frank and Estella Beam Hall on Dec. 6, 2023, killing professors Cha-Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64; Patricia Navarro Velez, 39; and Naoko Takemaru, 69. Economics professor Daraboth “Bot” Rith was shot 10 times but recovered and returned to UNLV nine months after the attack.
“It was a tragic day on our campus three years ago, Dec. 6,” interim UNLV President Chris Heavey said. “To essentially have a place where people can have the experience of remembering that event from a quiet and contemplative space where they can catch their breath; reflect on all the good things in life; and hopefully find a source of resilience and quiet calm would be, I think, a valuable contribution in the long-term healing process of the campus.”
The university will host its second Dec. 6 Remembrance Event at 10 a.m. today at the Donald C. Moyer Amphitheater, where renderings of a planned memorial and healing garden to represent the slain professors will be shared.
The garden will feature an elm tree as its anchor point with four “petals” extending from the center. Each petal will be dedicated to one of the four faculty members shot that day and will contain the person’s biography, a marker in their honor, a tree representing their cultural heritage and a bench for reflection.
The design for “Bloom” reflects feedback from community surveys, which frequently included words like “calm, quiet, tranquil and peaceful,” university officials said. Respondents also favored rounded shapes and natural colors, which informed the garden’s flowing, organic layout.
Plans for the memorial and healing garden began in the months following the shooting, with Sarah Quigley, director of special collections and archives at the University Libraries, taking up the effort.
The rest of the garden will feature informational signage, in-ground lighting, walking pathways, walls and drought-tolerant foliage — including plants representing the cultural backgrounds of each professor.
When people eventually walk through the garden, Quigley hopes they connect with the flower metaphor, “thinking about both what we lost that day, but also, how we’ll grow as a community as we move forward, and how resilient our community has been in the aftermath.”
The garden will cost $1 million to $2 million and be built where the current Xeric Garden is located near the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, across from the hospitality college. There is no timeline for completion, Quigley said.
“You feel so helpless when things like this happen and all you really want to do is sort of be able to provide some comfort, as much as you possibly can,” Quigley said. “I really think that’s what this garden is going to do, and I’m tremendously honored to have been part of that. We hope that even our neighbors who are not students, who are not faculty or staff, will feel some comfort from that space.”
The space is part of the recovery push from the university that also included strengthening student counseling and psychological services, and analyzing and improving campus safety.
The university invested more than $5 million in safety initiatives, including a slew of enhancements at Beam Hall — wall-mounted phones with an emergency notification system, video surveillance cameras throughout the building and increased security presence with an officer stationed on the first floor.
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