UVALDE, Texas – Residents of this small, grief-stricken city 55 miles east of the Mexican border stood silent along the main drag as President Joe Biden’s motorcade zoomed past early Sunday.
A bi-lingual choir sang church hymns outside of the town square, but there was no cheering and no booing as the commander-in-chief arrived on a mission of healing after Tuesday’s horrific attack at Robb Elementary School, where an 18-year-old loner killed 19 children and two teachers before federal agents stormed into a classroom and killed him.
“This is too close to home,” said Robert Garza, a retired professor who traveled to Uvalde from San Antonio. “I’m just hoping that this will be the beginning of something being done at the national level. Congress should cooperate with each other. We are Americans first.”
The Daily Wire is not naming the shooter as part of a policy to deprive mass killers of the notoriety that often motivates their evil actions. But most people in Uvalde, which has a population of just over 15,000, knew him or know his family. The attack has devastated the close-knit community.
Uvalde residents silently lined the street as the Biden motorcade passed Sunday morning. (The Daily Wire)
“If the faces of these children don’t inspire you to do something, for our government officials to do something, I don’t know what will,” said Katherine Galindo Garcia, a high school teacher from another district.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden were to first visit the memorial site at the school, the White House said. They were scheduled to meet with victims’ families and survivors of the shooting at Uvalde County Event Center in the afternoon, and meet separately with first responders later in the day. The first couple was also scheduled to attend Mass at Sacred Heart, Uvalde’s only Catholic church.
Biden visited Buffalo less than two weeks ago on a similar trip, comforting families of the victims of the May 14 mass shooting at a supermarket where a white supremacist allegedly killed 10 and wounded three.