Online retailer Zappos, headquartered in Las Vegas, has offered to pay funeral costs of victims shot and killed by gunman Stephen Paddock this month at the Route 91 Harvest music festival, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
In the wake of the Oct. 1 shooting, Zappos asked for donations for victims and their families and pledged to match donations up to $1 million.
The company, which is using crowdfunding site Crowdrise, had raised more than $350,000 by Friday morning. More than 2,800 donations have come from local businesses, organizations and individuals. The account description noted that 100 percent of funds raised will go toward helping support victims and their families.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Zappos has already used company funds -- not funds raised through the fundraiser -- to cover funeral costs for three victims. Families of each of the victims received $20,000 each to pay for funeral- and transportation-related costs, Steven Bautista, who oversees the Zappos for Good program and volunteer initiatives at the company, told the Sun.
“We have been connected with a few families that had funeral costs that they were not able to afford,” said Bautista. “We’ve been pulling money from the money that is outstanding, to be able to pay for the immediate needs that they may have. We don’t want them to have to skimp on funerals.”
Bautista said the company has helped pay to ship victims’ bodies across states to funeral homes. He asked that families of any of the Vegas victims who may need help with funeral-related costs reach out to zapposforgood@zappos.com.
Zappos, founded in 1999, moved its headquarters from Henderson, Nevada, to Las Vegas in 2013.
Zappos is a subsidiary of Amazon.
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