A mass shooting has transformed the K Street Mall into a 24-hour shrine to the victims

If you have ever been to the USS Arizona memorial in Honolulu, Dealey Plaza in Dallas or the site of the former World Trade Center in New York, you will feel the same sensation that you would at the corner of 10th and K streets in downtown Sacramento.

The utterly banal location where commerce and urban blight intersect is now a place of profound, incomprehensible tragedy.

At Sharif’s Jewelers, a makeshift memorial has sprung up with elaborate photo portraits of the victims of the shooting, along with flowers, votive candles, toy bears and the associated detritus of mourning.

Nearby, a perfectly unremarkable-looking man on a scooter was loudly declaiming against the COVID-19 vaccine, calling it a “death shot,” as his equally unremarkable-looking friend ratified his paranoia.

The real death shots of Sunday at 2 a.m. were why a small knot of people stood at the memorial, quietly taking pictures. On Wednesday, several television crews were still at the scene.

The crew from NBC Bay Area gamely showed me around the street where the carnage happened. It still seemed so out of context, even as my out-of-town guides described the orientation of the shooters, the placement of the dead, the bullet holes in the light posts and walls, and the vast tracts of plywood now covering the shattered windows.

On Sharif’s floor were the odd pieces of glass, still unswept. A block away, young politicos in blue suits discussed their lobbying steps away from the Capitol. Life goes on at California’s government complex, just steps away from where six were killed and 12 were wounded.

Few remember that there was a presidential assassination attempt against then-President Gerald Ford in Sacramento in 1975, on the state Capitol grounds and mere blocks from 10th and K.

I vividly recall going to Dealey Plaza in 1985, and young people were mooning a photographer, yards from where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the back seat of a limousine, in front of his wife, families and a number of young children who hoped to see the commander-in-chief but instead saw a murder.

At the USS Arizona, signs are posted: “Silence and Respect,” if I recall correctly. Any sane person would be dumbstruck anyway. At the corner of 10th and K, with the exception of the anti-vaxxers, there was no need for a sign telling people to be silent and respectful.

I tried to drive by the scene at 10th and K on Sunday morning. Police tape stretched across city blocks, and hundreds of people milled around the perimeter of the crime scene with their phones out, taking photographs while trying to make some sense of the catastrophe by simply being there.

They couldn’t.

As we learn more about the motives of the shooters, facts will fall into place as they always do, the facts will be considered and then we will go on about our lives, likely not doing anything about why it happened and how it happened. When there are pistols on the street that can fire 25 rounds in a second or two, who is safe at 10th and K, or anywhere?

The politicians at the Capitol have passed the laws, the governor tweets and signs the laws and we all go back to our lives, as vulnerable as the bystanders on Sunday at 2 a.m. at 10th and K. It seems insane. It is insane.

Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela tearfully described her feelings on that bloody Sunday. She’s a young person who probably hadn’t considered that her district would be the site of the deadliest shooting in the city’s history. I felt sympathy for her, really.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a master empath and politico looked stricken as he tried to answer unanswerable questions. Everyone is trying to answer those same questions, and we keep coming up with no answers, whether it’s gun control or investing more in youth. Society does a little, but not enough.

We owe the people killed at 10th and K so much more.

This story was originally published April 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.