hi, thank you for joining me. i m jessica dean in for fredricka whitfield. i m joined by dana bash in uvalde, texas. president biden there to meet with the grieving community. dana, tell us what you re seeing there. reporter: well, president biden and first lady jill biden are here today. he s playing a role that he has played so many times before, comforting families following an unspeakable tragedy. right now the president and first lady are meeting with families at a community center in uvalde. this morning the bidens visited a memorial site at robb elementary that, of course, is the site of the shootings on tuesday. and then they attended a catholic mass service where he was greeted by an archibishop here. these events taking on an even more solemn tone as questions continue to grow over apparent failures of law enforcement s response to tuesday s mass shooting. the visit also comes less than two weeks after they both visited a site of a different kind of massacre, a ra
that address the challenges that are now surfacing that this killer had in his life. that lead to someone doing what he did. and then there will be all other kinds of issues. there will be a committees formed. there will be meetings held. there will be proposals that will be derived, many of which will lead to laws that will be passed in the state of texas because let me make one thing perfectly clear. the status quo is unacceptable. this crime is unacceptable. we re not going to be here and talking about it and do nothing about it. we will be looking for the best laws that we can get past to make our communities and schools safer. [overlapping voices] universal background checks. [inaudible] governor abbott: let s be clear about a couple things. that show that these background checks. if everyone wants to seize on a particular strategy and assume that is the golden strategy right there, look at what happened in the santa fe shooting. a background check had no relevancy w
the wrong decision. not my words but the description from the director of public safety. he said the officers responding made a serious mistake and not immediately going into the classroom where a gunman killed 19 kids and two teachers tuesday. this is coming after extraordinary briefing that provided more clarity about the time line but raised a lot more questions, many more questions. we learned teacher propped open the door. the killer would later enter. the school safety officer responded to the scene and drove right past it as the gunman hid in the school parking lot. they said this was a barricade subject situation and somehow didn t think children were at risk. made that assessment. we learned two students called 911 basically begging for help. they both survived. why did that teacher prop the door open? why wasn t an armed safety officer on school grounds. why didn t the responding officer, there were 19 of them in the school at one point jump into active shooter trai
vigils are underway in uvalde, texas for the 19 children and 2 teachers gunned down inside robb elementary school by an 18-year-old high school drop-out. memorials outside the school from the community not far from the border with mexico. a friend of the gunman says he had a history of fighting as we see here in video obtained by cnn. texas authorities report he had no criminal record, no history of mental illness. more now on the investigation from cnn s ed. i m going to shoot an elementary school. that was one of the chilling text messages the uvalde gunman sent to a 15-year-old girl in germany at 11:21 central time in texas just 15 minutes before the shooting at robb elementary school. evil swept across uvalde yesterday. the 18-year-old gunman drove to the elementary school where he would kill 19 children and the faculty members 2 days before they were heading out for school break. the gunman wrote messages that foreshadowed the carnage he was about to inflict.
again you can see senator ted cruz there at the memorial. you can hear the emotion in that room and, obviously, right there you can see family members wee weeping. when we come tonight, we come with broken hearts. we come in disbelief and we come with pain and anguish. reporter: the pain here in uvalde being felt all over the country. 21 people killed in this attack. 19 of them young children. 17 others injured and it comes ten days after the max shooting in buffalo. cnn has been oak here more than 24 hours reporting this story. adrian, this has been so emotional, each as we learn more information about what took place here. reporter: certainly, john, when words escape us, sometimes music soothes, almost like we saw yesterday at the vigil when that violin just filled the silence as those parents and members of the community wept. you talked about this, two additional funerals were held yesterday for the buffalo shooting victim itself on the same day we learned about t