LAST UPDATE | 29 May 2022
US PRESIDENT JOE Biden laid flowers and prayed today at the makeshift shrine erected in Uvalde to the 19 children and two teachers murdered by a teen gunman after he stormed their elementary school.
Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, was in the small Texas town less than two weeks after making a similar trip to the site of another mass shooting – this time targeting African Americans in a racist attack – in Buffalo, New York.
Both wearing black, the first couple held hands in front of a memorial outside Robb Elementary School and walked slowly along the thicket of wreaths, bouquets, white crosses and blown-up photos of the slain children. Biden made the sign of the cross.
Reprising the increasingly familiar role of national mourner-in-chief, Biden was next to attend Mass, as well as meet privately with first responders and grieving relatives of the dead.
Applause broke out from a crowd gathered at the school when the Bidens’ motorcade arrived. However, illustrating the tension in the town after the massacre, there were boos at the appearance of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
“We need changes,” shouted one man.
Biden was not scheduled to speak publicly in Texas, but on Saturday he renewed his call for Congress to overcome years of paralysis to toughen firearms regulations.
“We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of the people and of our children,” Biden said in a speech at the University of Delaware.
The US Justice Department will conduct an independent review of the police response to the shooting, amid mounting questions over security personnel’s actions to stop the gunman.
“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active-shooter events,” said DoJ spokesman Anthony Coley in a statement.
The review was requested by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin and “will be fair, transparent and independent,” Coley added.
In the wake of the shooting, the behaviour of the police has come under severe scrutiny as accounts emerge of their slow reaction.
Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19 police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour before breaching the room the gunman was in and killing him, saying the officers mistakenly thought he had stopped killing and was now barricaded.
Officials now call this delay a “wrong decision” but parents have expressed fury.
Harrowing accounts emerged of the ordeal faced by survivors of Tuesday’s attack, where the behaviour of the police is under severe scrutiny.
Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was sitting in his fourth-grade classroom when the shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, barged in and announced: “You’re all going to die.”
Then “he just started shooting,” Salinas told ABC News.
Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19 police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour before finally breaching the room and killing Ramos, saying the officers mistakenly thought that he had stopped killing and was now barricaded.
Officials now call this delay a “wrong decision” but parents have expressed fury.
Survivors describe making desperate, whispered pleas for help in 911 phone calls during the lengthy assault, while some played dead to avoid drawing the shooter’s attention.
Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo even smeared the blood of a dead friend on herself as she feigned death.
Salinas said he thinks Ramos fired at him, but the bullet struck a chair, sending shrapnel into the boy’s leg. “I played dead so he wouldn’t shoot me,” he said.
Another student, Daniel, whose mother would not provide his last name, said he saw Ramos fire through the glass in the classroom door, striking his teacher.
The bullets were “hot,” he told The Washington Post, and when another bullet ricocheted and struck a fellow student in the nose, he said he could hear the sickening sound it made.
Though his teacher lay on the floor bleeding, she repeatedly told the students, “‘Stay calm. Stay where you are. Don’t move,’” Daniel recalled.
He was finally rescued by police who broke the windows of his classroom. Since then, he has had recurring nightmares.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday attended the funeral of a victim of the Buffalo mass shooting — Ruth Whitfield, who was among 10 people killed on May 14, allegedly by a self-described white supremacist.
Like Biden, she urged US lawmakers to take action on curbing access to firearms.
“Congress must have the courage to stand up, once and for all, to the gun lobby and pass reasonable gun safety laws,” Harris tweeted.
The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest school attack since 20 children and six staff were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
But despite the epidemic of mass shootings and ever growing flood of private gun purchases, Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on possible new regulations.
This time might be different, some lawmakers say.
Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said there were “serious negotiations” underway involving members of both parties.
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