A Texas lawmaker said during a hearing that the gunman who killed 19 students and two teachers during the Uvalde school shooting last year used the blood of those he shot to write “LOL” on a whiteboard inside Robb Elementary school.
Families of the victims attended the Tuesday hearing, where El Paso Democrat Joe Moody made the revelation, leading to gasps from those in the room.
Mr Moody, who was a part of the investigation into the shooting, said that “the attacker scooped up the blood of his victims and smeared it into his disgusting message”.
“What he wrote in innocent blood next to that (whiteboard) was the phrase, ‘LOL’,” he added.
The revelation was made hours into the hearing of the statehouse committee. The hearing began on Tuesday morning and didn’t end until after midnight. Families waited for almost 13 hours to share their testimony and argue for more gun control.
The panel is reviewing legislation that would raise the age to buy some semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21. The families of the victims and their allies have noted that it’s the bill they most want to be made into law, but it has been opposed by Republicans, in particular Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Javier Cazares lost his nine-year-old daughter Jacklyn in the shooting.
“My daughter tried to buy Super Glue at Walmart the other day and was flagged as being under 18 … What’s wrong with this picture?” he told the panel.
“I saw my daughter draped in a white sheet, cold and alone in an operating room,” he added as he became emotional.
A number of people who lost loved ones in the massacre said that if the proposed bill had been the law before the shooting on 24 May last year, their children would still be alive.
Kimberly Rubio lost her daughter Alexi in the shooting.
“We waited for 13 hours” to speak in front of the panel, she said. “Did you think we’d go home?”
She asked if the lawmakers had watched any of the coverage of the shooting.
“Did you imagine what it would feel like to bury your child?” she asked.
“Sit with that image as we do because only when you imagine will you as lawmakers take the necessary action, including voting for” the legislation.
She said that if the bill had been the law a year ago, the gunman would have been unable to buy the firearm “he used to murder our daughter and 20 others eight days after his 18th birthday”.
The legislation was put forward by Tracy King, a Democrat representing Uvalde, who said that if it had been introduced before the shooting, he probably wouldn’t have voted in favour. But he added that “everything changed” after the shooting.
“That changed my life,” he said, according to NBC News.
State Senator Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio told the families of the victims that “it isn’t right that these folks should have to work this hard to change something and to have something done. And it isn’t right that you should have to come up here session after session … and not have these lawmakers listen to you”.
Despite the objections of Republicans and the National Rifle Association, the families still hope they’ll be able to convince enough lawmakers to enact change.
Stephen Willeford, who helped impede a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs in 2017 when 26 people were killed, using his own firearm to confront the shooter, spoke up against the legislation.
“If you think he (the gunman) couldn’t have found a gun other ways or waited until he was 21 to do his murder spree you are wrong,” he said, according to NBC News.
