US
President Donald Trump on Friday visited a Florida hospital to offer
comfort to those wounded in a mass school shooting, after the FBI
admitted it mishandled a tip about the troubled teen behind the massacre
that left 17 dead.
The arrival of Trump and his wife Melania came at
the end of a difficult day for the families of those killed in
Wednesday’s rampage at a high school in Parkland, Florida, who learned
that the carnage could perhaps have been averted.
The FBI admitted it
had received a chilling warning in January from a tipster who said the
19-year-old gunman, Nikolas Cruz, could be planning a mass shooting, but
that agents had failed to follow up.
At Broward Health North
Hospital, where Trump met with survivors of the shooting, the president
thanked the doctors, nurses and first responders for their “incredible”
work, and described the carnage as “very sad.”
He and his wife then
headed to the Broward County sheriff’s office, where they met with
Florida Governor Rick Scott, Senator Marco Rubio, Sheriff Scott Israel
and other law enforcement officers.
Trump told the group he had met
with a female survivor who had been shot four times, including in the
lung, adding that quick first responders had saved her life. “Give them a
raise,” he said.
He later tweeted several pictures of himself and
Melania, visiting with a survivor and her family, as well as posing with
hospital staff.
“We are committed to working with state and local
leaders to help secure our schools, and tackle the difficult issue of
mental health,” Trump wrote in an Instagram post alongside the picture.
The
president’s visit to the Parkland area north of Miami came amid growing
anger among parents and students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School over America’s seeming unwillingness to toughen gun control laws.
“My princess wasn’t safe in that school,” said Andrew Pollack, speaking at the funeral of his 18-year-old daughter Meadow.
“Please pray that this horrific tragedy never happens to another family.”
At
the evening briefing at the sheriff’s department, Rubio said: “This is a
community and a state that is in deep pain and they want action to make
sure this doesn’t happen again.” Trump replied: “You can count on it.”
The
FBI made a stunning admission earlier in the day, saying a “person
close to Nikolas Cruz” made a call to the agency’s public tipline on
January 5 to “report concerns about him.”
“The caller provided
information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic
behaviour, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential
of him conducting a school shooting,” the FBI said in a statement.
The
information from the caller “should have been assessed as a potential
threat to life” and forwarded to the agency’s Miami field office, it
said.
Instead, “no further investigation was conducted.”
“We have
spoken with victims and families, and deeply regret the additional pain
this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy,” said Federal
Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray, who took up his post
in August.
Wray said he was “committed to getting to the bottom of
what happened,” and Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered an immediate
review to ensure “effective response to indications of potential
violence.”
But Scott, the state governor, nevertheless called for the FBI chief to step down, saying the failure to act was “unacceptable.”
“Seventeen innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isn’t going to cut it,” Scott said.
Trump’s
visit to the Parkland area — not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort, where
he will spend the long President’s Day weekend — was not announced in
advance, perhaps because he risked being greeted with angry demands for
action on gun laws.
“It’s illogical that the law says a minor can’t
have a drink, but can buy a gun,” said 47-year-old Mavy Rubiano, whose
child survived the shooting.
In Washington, the political response so
far makes it clear that the powerful pro-gun National Rifle Association
— which spent $30mn to support Trump’s election in 2016 — remains
formidable.
As with previous mass shootings, the focus of gun control
advocates was the easy availability of the AR-15, a civilian version of
the US military’s M16.
Millions have been sold around the United
States, and AR-15-style rifles were used in the mass shootings in Las
Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Texas and Newtown, Connecticut.
People bring flowers to a temporary memorial at Pine Trails Park in Parkland, Florida.