Meghan Markle made a surprise visit to Uvalde, Texas where she paid her respects at a memorial for victims of the school shooting and donated food to a community blood drive.
The Duchess of Sussex laid flowers at a makeshift memorial on Thursday not far from Robb Elementary School, the site of gunman Salvador Ramos' attack.
Her visit was unannounced. A spokesperson for Meghan said the visit was made in a "personal capacity as a mother" to offer "her condolences and support in person to a community experiencing unimaginable grief."
Meghan also visited a community centre hosting a blood drive to donate food.
Volunteers told Buzzfeed News the duchess, who wore a baseball cap and a black face mask, dropped off two "large" crates filled with sandwiches, beverages, and desserts for blood donors.
"I had no idea who she was. She just was carrying on a conversation like her and I knew each other for years," volunteer Gloria Contreras, 40, told BuzzFeed.
"We were just talking about, you know, the situation and what happened what we were doing here. I told her about us giving out water to the people and feeding them."
The volunteer said she told Meghan about her family and of the warm-hearted small town residents of Uvalde.
At the memorial, the duchess laid a bouquet of white roses and was dressed casually in a white t-shirt, jeans, baseball hat and trainers.
She was joined by her head of security who looked on from a respectful distance.
It is unclear whether husband Prince Harry, who lives with her and their two children in Montecito, California, accompanied her on the trip, but he was not seen at the memorial with her, the Mirror reported.
The memorial overlooks a pond and consists of a series of crosses with tags bearing the names of those who were killed.
The Uvalde shooting is the deadliest attack of its kind since 20 elementary-age children and six staff were killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
Ramos was able to enter the school without any confrontation, authorities have said, contradicting earlier reports that a police officer engaged him outside the building.
The teenager crashed his pickup truck outside the school at 11.28am (4.28pm GMT) and fired several shots at two bystanders across the street.
He walked into the school at 11.40am (1640 GMT), Victor Escalon, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a news conference on Thursday.
Escalon said officers arrived and entered the school four minutes later but took cover after Ramos fired multiple rounds at them and barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom, where he shot his victims.
An hour passed before a US Border Patrol tactical team breached the classroom and killed Ramos, Escalon confirmed.
The newly detailed timeline came hours after videos emerged showing desperate parents outside Robb Elementary School during the attack, imploring the officers maintaining a perimeter to storm the building, as some fathers were restrained.
The massacre has reignited a national debate over the country's gun laws.
President Joe Biden and his fellow democrats have vowed to push for new restrictions, despite resistance from Republicans.
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