Trump meets with shooting victims
$1M grant given to Santa Fe school district
HOUSTON — President Donald Trump spent over an hour Thursday offering private condolences to some of the families affected by last month’s deadly Texas school shooting.
While in Texas, Trump’s newly formed school safety commission met outside Washington, part of the president’s solution to combat the rising tide of bloodshed.
A White House spokesman said Trump was “moved” by the May 18 shooting at Santa Fe High School, which left eight students and two substitute teachers dead. A student faces capital murder charges in the attack.
“These events are very tragic, whenever they happen. And you know, the president wants to extend his condolences and talk about the issue of school safety,” spokesman Raj Shah said.
Trump did not publicly share what he told the grieving families and local leaders during a meeting at a Coast Guard base outside Houston. Reporters were not permitted to witness the meeting.
Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman traveling with the president, said the people Trump met with “were all affected in some way” by the shooting. Gidley refused to categorize the individuals or release other details “out of respect for them and the grieving process.”
Separately, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whom Trump put in charge of the school safety commission, announced a $1 million grant
to the Santa Fe school district to help with post-shooting recovery efforts.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, both Republicans, greeted Trump after Air Force One landed at a Houston military base. Abbott joined Trump for the short ride in the presidential limousine to a Coast Guard hangar where the meeting took place.
Trump then headed to a fundraiser at a downtown Houston hotel, the first of two events across Texas on Thursday. A White House official did not immediately respond to requests for details about how much money was to be raised, and who was benefiting, from the events.
After 17 teachers and students were killed during a February shooting
at a high school in Parkland, Fla., the president said he would work to improve school safety, but has not called for new gun control legislation. He created the commission to review ways to make schools safer.
Gov. Abbott, a Republican and a staunch gun-rights supporter, has called for schools to have more armed personnel and said they should put greater focus on spotting student mental health problems.
Classes at Santa Fe High School resumed Tuesday for the first time since the shooting. Investigators say student Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, carried out the attack with a shotgun and pistol that belonged to his father.