Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, made a visit to a memorial site for the victims involved in the deadly elementary school shooting in Texas. Meghan placed white flowers tied with a purple ribbon at a memorial outside the Uvalde County Courthouse on Thursday. She paid her respects after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Also Read: Texas elementary school shooting: What do we know so far? The Duchess of Sussex lives in California with her husband Prince Harry and their two children. She took the trip to Texas in a personal capacity as a mother to offer her condolences and support in person to a “community experiencing unimaginable grief,” according to her spokesperson. Meghan left the flowers at the memorial and stood with her arms crossed while she looked at the memorials.    

A gunman stormed into an elementary school Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers in the United States’ deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. Law enforcement officers killed the shooter, identified as a local 18-year-old who had shot and wounded his grandmother and spelled out his violent plans in online messages shortly before the massacre at Robb Elementary. Investigators say they don’t yet know a motive for the shootings. A look at what we know so far: WHAT HAPPENED IN UVALDE? The attacker, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at their Uvalde home, then fled in her truck as she summoned help, according to Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and other officials. A short distance away, Ramos crashed the truck outside the school, got out with a rifle and approached a back door, officials said. They said an officer assigned to the school “engaged” Ramos, but the gunman got into the building and down a hallway to a fourth-grade classroom. After locking the classroom door, he opened fire around 11:30 a.m. with an AR-15-style rifle, carrying multiple magazines. A team including local officers and Border Patrol agents ultimately forced the door open and shot Ramos to death after he fired at them, police said. Other officers and responders shattered some of the school’s windows so teachers and students could escape. Ramos was wearing a tactical vest, though not body armor, according to state senators who said they were briefed on the shooting. There was another AR-15-style rifle in his truck, and a backpack with several magazines full of ammunition was found near the school entrance. WHO WERE THE VICTIMS? Authorities haven’t yet released the victims’ names, but some information about them has emerged from their families. Eliahna Garcia was an outgoing 10-year-old who loved to sing, dance, play sports and be with her family, according to aunt Siria Arizmendi. Uziyah Garcia was only 8 and “the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” said grandfather Manny Renfro, recalling how the youngster was already able to master football pass patterns. Xavier Javier Lopez, 10, had been looking forward to a summer of swimming. Ebullient and loving, he was “just enjoying life, not knowing that this tragedy was going to happen today,” cousin Lisa Garza said. Swift-footed Layla Salazar, 10, had won six races at the school’s field day. “She was just a whole lot of fun,” said her father, Vincent Salazar, remembering how she danced to TikTok videos and sang along with him to the Guns N’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’ Mine” every morning on the way to school. Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10, hadn’t wanted to go to school Tuesday, appearing to think that something bad would happen, her mom, Veronica Luevanos, told Univision. A cousin of Jailah’s also was killed. Eva Mireles, 44, had been teaching for 17 years, according to a welcome letter to students she wrote last fall. She and her husband, a school police officer, had a grown daughter. Mireles wrote that she loved running and hiking, and relative Amber Ybarra said she had an adventurous spirit. WHO WAS THE GUNMAN? Ramos lived in Uvalde itself, a predominantly Latino city of about 16,000 people in a farming area roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border and 85 miles (135 kilometers) from San Antonio. A high school dropout, Ramos had no known criminal record or history of mental health problems, Abbott said. Also Read: 'Horrifying' conspiracy theories swirl around Texas shooting In the half-hour before the school killings, Ramos used Facebook to say that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had done so, and then that he was going to shoot up an unspecified elementary school, officials said. Facebook said Ramos’ posts were private messages that came to light after the killings. Investigators also have been scrutinizing an Instagram account that apparently belonged to Ramos. In the days before the shooting, posts featured a photo of a hand holding an ammunition magazine and another photo of two AR-15-style rifles. The account asked another Instagram user to share the latter photo with her 10,000 followers; she declined, saying it was “scary” and she barely knew him. On the morning of the massacre, the account linked to Ramos sent her an ominous message: “I’m about to.” WHERE DID THE GUN COME FROM? The gunman legally bought his weapons soon after his 18th birthday and days before the attack, law enforcement officials told state lawmakers. He purchased one rifle from a federally licensed gun dealer in the Uvalde area May 17, according to a state police briefing to state Sen. John Whitmire. On May 18, the gunman bought 375 rounds of ammunition. Then, two days later, he bought a second rifle.  WHAT DON’T WE KNOW? Authorities haven’t disclosed a full list of the victims. Nor have many important details about the attack been made public.   Among them: what transpired between Ramos and the school officer who first encountered him; who saw the online posts attributed to him; what, if any, history he had with Robb Elementary; and why he went on the rampage. “We don’t see a motive or catalyst right now,” McCraw said Wednesday afternoon. HOW MANY MASS SHOOTINGS HAVE THERE BEEN IN U.S. SCHOOLS? There have been 14 shootings that have claimed four or more victims’ lives at U.S. schools and colleges since 1999, when two students killed 12 of their peers and a teacher at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. That’s according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University, and to other AP reporting. These mass attacks have killed 169 people in all. The massacre in Uvalde was the deadliest since December 2012, when 20 first graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut by a gunman who had just killed his mother. In 2007, a Virginia Tech student fatally shot 32 people.    

Lamenting a uniquely American tragedy, an anguished and angry President Joe Biden delivered an urgent call for new restrictions on firearms after a gunman shot and killed at least 19 children at a Texas elementary school. Biden spoke Tuesday night from the White House barely an hour after returning from a five-day trip to Asia that was bracketed by mass shootings in the U.S. He pleaded for action to address gun violence after years of failure — and bitterly blamed firearm manufacturers and their supporters for blocking legislation in Washington. Also read: Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school ’“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said with emotion. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?” With first lady Jill Biden standing by his side in the Roosevelt Room, the president, who has suffered the loss of two of his own children — though not to gun violence — spoke in visceral terms about the grief of the loved ones of the victims and the pain that will endure for the students who survived. “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” Biden said. “There’s a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you’re being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out.” He called on the nation to hold the victims and families in prayer — but also to work harder to prevent the next tragedy, “It’s time we turned this pain into action,” he said. At least 19 students were killed at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde, Texas, according to local officials. The death toll also included two adults. The gunman died after being shot by responding officers, local police said. It was just a week earlier that Biden, on the eve of his overseas trip, traveled to Buffalo to meet with victims’ families after a racist, hate-filled shooter killed 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The back-to-back tragedies served as sobering reminders of the frequency and brutality of an American epidemic of mass gun violence. “These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world,” Biden said, reflecting that other nations have people filled with hate or with mental health issues but no other industrialized nation experiences gun violence at the level of the U.S. “Why?” he asked. It was much too early to tell if the latest violent outbreak could break the political logjam around tightening the nation’s gun laws, after so many others — including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26, including 20 children — have failed. “The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong,” Biden said. He has previously called for a ban on assault-style weapons, as well as tougher federal background check requirements and “red flag” laws that are meant to keep guns out of the hands of those with mental health problems. Late Tuesday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer set in motion possible action on two House-passed bills to expand federally required background checks for gun purchases, but no votes have been scheduled. Biden was somber when he returned to the White House, having been briefed on the shooting on Air Force One. Shortly before landing in Washington, he spoke with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and offered “any and all assistance” needed, the White House said. He directed that American flags be flown at half-staff through sunset Saturday in honor of the victims in Texas. Also read: 3 teens killed, 1 injured in gas station shooting in U.S. Texas His aides, some of whom had just returned from Asia with the president, gathered to watch Biden’s speech on televisions in the West Wing. “I’d hoped when I became president I would not have to do this, again,” he said. “Another massacre.” In a stark reminder of the issue’s divisiveness, Biden’s call for gun measures was booed at a campaign event in Georgia hosted by Herschel Walker, who won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Speaking at an Asian Pacific American event that was intended to celebrate Biden’s Asia trip, Vice President Kamala Harris said earlier that people normally declare in moments like this, “our hearts break — but our hearts keep getting broken ... and our broken hearts are nothing compared to the broken hearts of those families.” “We have to have the courage to take action ... to ensure something like this never happens again,” she said. Echoing Biden’s call, former President Barack Obama, who has called the day of the Sandy Hook shooting the darkest of his administration, said, “It’s long past time for action, any kind of action.” “Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear,” he said in a statement. “We’re also angry for them. Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo—our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.” Congress has been unable to pass substantial gun violence legislation ever since the bipartisan effort to strengthen background checks on firearm purchases collapsed in the aftermath of the 2012 shooting. Despite months of work, a bill that was backed by a majority of senators, fell to a filibuster — unable to to overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to advance. In impassioned remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who represented Newton, Connecticut, in the House at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre, asked his colleagues why they even bother running for office if they’re going to stand by and do nothing. “I’m here on this floor to beg — to literally get down on my hands and knees — to beg my colleagues,” he said. Murphy said he was planning to reach out to Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn after the two had teamed on an earlier background check bill that never became law. He said he would also reach out to Texas’ other Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “I just don’t understand why people here think we’re powerless,” Murphy said. “We aren’t.” Cornyn told reporters he was on his way to Texas and would talk with them later. Cruz issued a statement calling it “a dark day. We’re all completely sickened and heartbroken.” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who sponsored gun legislation that failed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate after Sandy Hook, said, “We’re just pushing on people who just won’t budge on anything.” “It makes no sense at all why we can’t do commonsense things and try to prevent some of this from happening,” he said.