Cross-maker delivers to Ill. hometown Support offered to workers

He left total of 100-plus after Las Vegas shooting

AURORA, Ill. — An Illinois man who has delivered more than 26,000 white crosses to Las Vegas and other sites around the U.S., largely to remember victims of gun violence, now finds himself doing the same in his hometown.

“I just didn’t see it coming,” said Greg Zanis, who made crosses for the five victims of the shooting Friday in Aurora, Illinois, where an employee about to lose his job opened fire inside the Henry Pratt Co. warehouse.

Zanis set up 58 crosses after the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting in Las Vegas in October 2017 and

AURORA, Ill. — The suburban Chicago manufacturing warehouse where five people were fatally shot won’t reopen until next week, but its doors will be open to support workers, company officials said Monday.

The Henry Pratt Co. facility in Aurora, Illinois, will be open to any employees who want to spend time with colleagues, and counselors will be available, spokeswoman Yolanda Kokayi said.

“The lives lost were not only our employees, but also fathers, husbands, grandfathers, brothers, sons and our friends,” Kokayi said in an emailed statement Monday. “Their loss has left a huge void in us all.” many others after school shootings at Columbine and Sandy Hook and in Orlando. The total has reached 26,379. Last year, Zanis said, he made 5,000 crosses — including 11 placed near the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign after a shooting in Thousand Oaks, California and 58 to mark the one-year anniversary of the Harvest festival shooting — and he has been working on a batch of crosses for victims of Chicago gun violence.

Zanis said he heard squad cars Friday afternoon because he lives near the police station. Zanis started making crosses when he heard people had died. He placed five crosses outside the Aurora warehouse Saturday.

Zanis usually places the crosses and leaves, but because it’s his hometown, he says he will attend all the vigils and funerals.

“I feel like I am carrying the weight of the whole city on my shoulders,” he said.

Jeff Knox The Associated Press A mourner places a flower Sunday at the crosses outside of the Henry Pratt Co. facility in Aurora, Ill., in memory of the five employees killed on Friday.