U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he will meet with victims of the mass Florida school shooting that killed 17 people and wounded 14 others.
“I will be leaving for Florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth — but people whose lives have been totally shattered,” Trump posted on Twitter. “Am also working with Congress on many fronts.”
Trump, who is scheduled to spend the long President’s Day weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, did not say when he would meet with the victims.
On Wednesday, the third most deadly school shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the city of Parkland, about 65 kilometers south of Palm Beach, when Nikolas Cruz allegedly killed 17 people using a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
The 19-year-old Cruz faces 17 counts of premeditated murder and is being held at the main Broward County jail without bond.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged Friday it did not follow “established protocols” after receiving information about Cruz on its national tipline. The FBI said someone with a close relationship to Cruz left information on January 5 about Cruz’s desire to kill people and other disturbing details. Director Christopher Wray said in a statement he is devoted to “getting to the bottom” of the matter and that FBI employees “are relentlessly committed to improving all that we do and how we do it.”
Two days before the shooting, the president unveiled his fiscal year 2019 budget that proposes to cut millions of dollars from federal education programs that are designed to help prevent criminal activities in schools and help them recover from tragic events.
The proposed budget calls for a $25 million funding cut for nationwide school safety activities and the elimination of a $400 million grant program that school districts can use to offer mental health aid or to prevent bullying.
The funds that are on the chopping block were used to provide mental health services to students and teachers in 2012 at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children between six and seven years-old and six adult staff members were killed in the worst school shooting in American history.
…
