(UVALDE, Texas) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday to grieve with the community after 19 children and two teachers were killed in a school shooting there last week.
The Bidens first paid their respects at the memorial site at Robb Elementary School, accompanied by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Uvalde County Independent School District Independent Superintendent Dr. Hal Harrell and Robb Elementary School Principal Mandy Gutierrez.
Jill Biden was seen touching the photos of the children at the site, filled with flowers and white crosses in honor of each of the victims.
The president and first lady then attended mass at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church alongside hundreds of parishioners.
They are expected to visit with survivors, families of the victims and first responders, according to the White House.
Twenty-one people, including 19 third- and fourth-graders, were killed Tuesday after an 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, used an assault-style rifle to open fire on two connected classrooms at Robb Elementary, according to authorities.
“I’d hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again,” President Biden said on Tuesday as he addressed the nation following the shooting. “Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, second-, third-, fourth-graders,” he said.
Sunday’s visit to Uvalde is the second trip the president has taken in two weeks to comfort a grief-stricken community following a mass shooting.
On May 17, Biden traveled to Buffalo, New York, to meet with the families of the victims of the Tops supermarket shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime. Ten people, all of whom were Black, were killed on May 14.
Biden addressed both the the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings on Saturday during his commencement speech at the University of Delaware, his alma mater.
“Too much violence. Too much fear. Too much grief,” he said, calling on Americans to work together to make the country safer. “Let’s be clear: Evil came to that elementary school classroom in Texas, to that grocery store in New York, to far too many places where innocents have died.”
ABC News’ Armando Garcia contributed to this report.
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