Biden to seek to console Texas town devastated by mass shooting

FE Team | Published: May 29, 2022 23:07:26

WILMINGTON, May 29 (Reuters): President Joe Biden on Sunday will seek to comfort a Texas town ripped apart by the largest US school shooting in a decade amid lingering questions about whether law enforcement's failure to act swiftly contributed to the death toll.
Biden's familiar role as comforter-in-chief will be complicated by local anger over a decision by law enforcement in Uvalde, Texas, to allow the shooter to remain in a classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children in the room made panicked 911 calls for help.
Investigators on Saturday were seeking to determine how critical mistakes were made in the response to the shooting that left 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School dead, and some are calling on the FBI to look into police actions. read more
Biden is expected to visit a memorial erected at the school, and meet with victims' families.
"He has to stay focused on the pain and grief of the families and the community and understand that all of this has been compounded by the fact that we still don't know exactly what happened. The more we learn, the more it seems the children were poorly served," said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
The Democratic president also confronts the stark reality that he been relatively powerless to stop American mass shootings or convince Republicans that stronger gun controls represent an answer. The Texas visit will be his third presidential trip to a mass shooting site, including earlier this month when he visited Buffalo, New York, after a shooting that left 10 Black people at a supermarket dead.