Two days after the horrific mass shooting that claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school, Meghan Markle went to Texas to pay her respects.
Attending a newly constructed memorial, the Duchess of Sussex laid flowers at the base of one of the memorials which was created at the front of the Ulvade County Courthouse in the wake of the tragedy. The site was constructed to honour each person who was killed that day, with each victims name written across white crosses.
On her visit to the memorial, Meghan can be seen placing a bouquet of white roses against the cross dedicated to Uziyah Garcia, who was one of the Robb Elementary School students killed in the violent attack.
“He was my world. He was my everything,” Garcia’s father, Sergio, told the Los Angeles Times. “Now, I’m never going to hold him again, never going to get to kiss him again.”
Meghan’s visit was a rare, unannounced public appearance given that she currently lives in Los Angeles with Prince Harry and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.
On the Duchess’s visit to Uvalde, she was accompanied by one bodyguard as she paid her respects on her own, with Prince Harry not present.
According to The Daily Mail, she had no conversations with the press during her visit, and focused all of her attention on paying her respects. And when she reached the cross for Garcia, she reportedly silently bowed her head for a moment of silence.
Currently, Meghan is one of the first public figures to visit Uvalde following the tragic events, with U.S. President Joe Biden expected to visit in the next few days.
The Uvalde mass shooting has been deemed as the deadliest since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, where a gunman killed 20 children and six staff members. For the Uvalde massacre, all that will be remembered were the innocent lives lost in an unnecessary and heinous act of violence.
If you would like to support the community of Uvalde, you can find the GoFundMe page to provide relief for the victims’ families here.
