Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha traveled to Minneapolis on Wednesday and met with the parents of the victims of last week’s school shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church.
“I have never had a day that will stay with me like this day did,” the vice president said of his emotional meetings with grieving parents, children wounded by gunfire and church leaders.
“These parents, in the midst of the worst grief of their entire lives, they opened up their lives, and they opened up their hearts, and they made me part of it,” he added.
The Vances met with the parents of Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, both of whom were killed when the 23-year-old gunman Robin Westman barricaded a door to the church and opened fire through a stained-glass window during a school opening Mass. Westman then killed himself.
The vice president and second lady brought two bouquets of flowers, tied with blue ribbon, to leave at the entrance to the church where the massacre took place.
After visiting the site of the Westman’s rampage – the church sanctuary, where the gunman fired 116 rounds from a rifle as children and adults attended Mass – the Vances went to Children’s Minnesota Hospital, where they spoke with Lydia Kaiser and Weston Halsne.
Weston, 10, was struck in the neck by one of Westman’s bullets and had “just got out of surgery,” the vice president said. Lydia, also 10, was hit while shielding her “little buddy” – her therapy dog – from the gunfire.
The vice president said “every single family” he met with asked for prayers.
“So, my fellow Americans, if you’re the praying type, say a prayer for this innocent girl, who’s actually in surgery right now, that the swelling will go down, that she will be okay, because she’s still in a fight for her life,” Vance said. “And every single family, to a person, is desperate that the death toll, which currently is at two, stays at two.”
Here’s what we know about the Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis
Heartbroken parents also expressed that they wished the innocent children killed last week — little Fletcher and Harper — were discussed more than “the brutal maniac who shot up this school,” Vance said.
“We should talk less about the crazy person who took these children from us. We should talk about these kids – their hopes and their dreams and the fact that they had a full life ahead of them that was cut short,” he told reporters.
Vance also noted that every parent he spoke to wanted something to be done to help prevent future mass shootings.
“I get the sense they came from a wide diversity of political perspectives, but every single one of them …. all they ask is that we look very seriously at the root causes, that we look very seriously at ways to prevent crazy people who are about to shoot up the school from getting access to firearms,” he said.
Vance said he will “honor these parents and the children that they lost” by “being a better dad and hugging my kids tonight, and making sure that they know that their dad loves them.”
He encouraged other families to do the same.
“Make sure that you hug your kids tight, because there are families in Minneapolis who won’t be able to do that ever again.”
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