Security tight for Vegas Golden Knights victory parade, amid echoes of…
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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Tens of thousands of Vegas Golden Knights fans, maybe more, were expected at the heart of the Las Vegas Strip on Saturday for a Stanley Cup victory parade and a rally to mark the team’s first-ever NHL championship.
For the team that played its first game as an expansion franchise in October 2017 and for tourists in hotel rooms with windows overlooking the parade route in 2023, the event bore echoes of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history five years ago. Guests in high-rises with views of the strip were awakened by security guards asking to check around windows for guns or other weapons.
Las Vegas police said they prepared for upwards of 100,000 people to cram street-level viewing areas along Las Vegas Boulevard for a celebration that planners compared with annual New Year’s Eve fireworks shows that in past years have drawn estimates of 400,000 people. Unlike a winter midnight, evening temperatures on Saturday were expected to be in the 90s.
Hotel security guards searching rooms evoked the October 2017 shooting, when a lone gunman rained bullets from 32nd floor windows of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 20,000 people at an outdoor country music festival across the street. Fifty-eight people died that night and two died later of their injuries. Authorities said more than 850 people were injured. The gunman killed himself before police reached him. His motive for the attack was never firmly established.
Players who dubbed themselves the Golden Misfits after being drafted from other NHL teams embraced survivors, first responders and volunteers and the team has over the years become a key part of “Vegas Strong” events aimed at healing community trauma.
That first year, team owner Bill Foley famously predicted the Golden Knights would make the playoffs in three years and win the Stanley Cup in six years. The franchise surprised many by making the playoffs the first year and advancing to the championship before losing to the
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