US President Joe Biden is visiting the scene of country’s largest school shooting in a decade to meet and comfort victims’ families.
The president and First Lady Jill Biden will visit a memorial at the school in Uvalde, Texas, attend a church service and also meet with survivors and first responders.
It comes as investigators seek to determine how critical mistakes were made in the response to the shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
Some are calling on the FBI to look into police actions following a decision to allow the shooter, Salvador Ramos, 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.
Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Mr Biden 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”.
She added: “The more we learn, the more it seems the children were poorly served.”
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Police say the gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school last week with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle after earlier killing his grandmother at the house they shared.
Official accounts of how police responded to the shooting have flip-flopped wildly, with calls mounting for an independent probe.
Mr Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for major changes to America’s gun laws but has been powerless to stop mass shootings or convince Republicans that stricter controls could stem the carnage.
Julian Moreno, who was attending Sunday services at Primera Iglesia Bautista where he previously served as pastor, said the police had made “a huge mistake” but that he did not hold it against them.
His great-granddaughter was among those killed in Tuesday’s shooting.
He said: “I feel sorry for them because they have to live with that mistake of just standing by.”
The Texas visit is Mr Biden’s third trip as president to a mass shooting site.
Earlier this month, he visited Buffalo, New York, after a shooting that left 10 black people dead at a supermarket.
Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo this weekend, saying that in the wake of the two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society”.
