JD and Usha Vance pay their respects to victims of Minneapolis Catholic school shooting: Never had a day that will stay with me like this

Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha traveled to Minneapolis on Wednesday and met with the parents of the victims of last week’s school shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church. “I have never had a day that will stay with me like this day did,” the vice president said of his emotional meetings with grieving parents, children wounded by gunfire and church leaders. “These parents, in the midst of the worst grief of their entire lives, they opened up their lives, and they opened up their hearts, and they made me part of it,” he added. The Vances met with the parents of Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, both of whom were killed when the 23-year-old gunman Robin Westman barricaded a door to the church and opened fire through a stained-glass window during a school opening Mass.Westman then killed himself.

The vice president and second lady brought two bouquets of flowers, tied with blue ribbon, to leave at the entrance to the church where the massacre took place. After visiting the site of the Westman’s rampage – the church sanctuary, where the gunman fired 116 rounds from a rifle as children and adults attended Mass – the Vances went to Children’s Minnesota Hospital, where they spoke with Lydia Kaiser and Weston Halsne. Weston, 10, was struck in the neck by one of Westman’s bullets and had “just got out of surgery,” the vice president said.Lydia, also 10, was hit while shielding her “little buddy” – her therapy dog – from the gunfire. The vice president said “every single family” he met with asked for prayers. “So, my fellow Americans, if you’re the praying type, say a prayer for this innocent girl, who’s actually in surgery right now, that the swelling will go down, that she will be okay, because she’s still in a fight for her life,” Vance said.

“And every single family, to a person, is desperate that the death toll, which currently is at two, stays at two.” Heartbroken parents also expressed ...