President Joe Biden has said that he is considering demolishing the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 young children and two teachers were shot and killed last week in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.
State Senator Roland Gutierrez told KSAT that the president promised to provide federal resources to potentially raze Robb Elementary School and build a new campus in the community left heartbroken by the senseless massacre.
“He said, ‘I’m not going away. I’m going to bring you resources. We’re going to look to raze that school, build a new one,’” said the Democrat, who represents Uvalde.
“I can’t tell you how many little children that I’ve talked to that don’t want to go into that building. They’re just traumatized. They’re just destroyed.”
The president and First Lady Jill Biden visited the site of the massacre on Sunday where they spent time at a makeshift memorial set up for the 21 victims and lay a bouquet of white flowers.
Mr Biden wiped tears from his eyes as he looked at photographs of the murdered nine, 10 and 11-year-old children and two teachers.
Speaking to local lawmakers, Mr Biden also said that he was “looking to get real money for healthcare” for the grieving community members.
“This is a community that is going to need therapy. There is one psychiatrist in Uvalde, very few mental health therapists. We’re going to change that. It is a must,” said Mr Gutierrez.
The sites of mass shootings are often torn down as survivors struggle to return to the place of trauma while there are also concerns about such places attracting fanatics.
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was demolished after 20 students aged six and seven years old and six staff members were shot and killed by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza back in 2012.
A new $50m school was built on the same land.
The school district for Columbine High School in Colorado was also considering tearing down the building saying that the site had become “a macabre source of inspiration and motivation” for people with “a morbid fascination” for the 1999 mass shooting that left 12 students and one teacher dead.
Hundreds of people had sought to enter the campus in the years after the attack, including 18-year-old Sol Pais who travelled to Colorado from her home in Florida armed with a shotgun and ammunition in 2019, sending the school into lockdown.
However, the proposal to demolish the site was shelved in 2019 following mixed opinions from the local community.
During the president’s visit to Uvalde on Sunday, he was met by the desperate pleas of victims’ families who shouted “do something” as he left a midday mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
Mr Biden promised: “We will.”
In the last two weeks alone, Mr Biden has travelled to comfort two communities torn apart by gun violence.
Just 10 days before the Uvalde massacre, a self-proclaimed white supremacis and racist shot dead 10 Black people and injured several others in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott was met with boos and jeers as he joined the Bidens at the site of the massacre.
The Republican, who relaxed gun laws even further in the state last year, has come under fire in the aftermath of the shooting as pressure is building on lawmakers to introduce gun reform legislation and put an end to the surge in mass shootings devastating communities across the country.
While Mr Abbott cancelled his in-person speech at the NRA conference over the weekend, he still sent a pre-recorded message to the crowd where he continued to claim that gun laws don’t stop “madmen” from carrying out shootings.
Gunman Salvador Ramos legally bought two AR-15 rifles and 1,657 rounds of ammunition in the days after his 18th birthday on 16 May.
On 24 May he then shot his grandmother in the face before driving towards Robb Elementary School in the family’s truck.
He abandoned the vehicle in a ditch close to the school and entered the building through a door that was propped open.
Once inside, Ramos barricaded himself in a classroom where he shot dead 19 students and two teachers.
He was finally shot dead by Border Patrol agents after officials stormed the classroom.
The Justice Department has launched a probe into the handling of the situation after local officials admitted that critical mistakes were made.
Officers on the scene hung back, taking more than an hour to enter the barricaded classroom while gunshots continued to ring out and desperate children trapped inside called 911 begging for help.
