Obama visits victims of Aurora shootings
US President Barack Obama visits the victims of the gun attack at a Batman screening in Aurora, Colorado as a vigil is held to remember the 12 people shot dead.
President Obama said he offered hugs, tears and the nation’s sympathy to survivors of the Colorado shooting rampage and to families whose loved ones who were killed.
Behind closed doors in the Denver suburb of Aurora, where Friday’s massacre happened, Obama met one by one with families gathered at a hospital and patients recovering in intensive care.
“I come to them not so much as president as I do as a father and as a husband,” Obama told reporters after his visits.
“The reason stories like this have such an impact on us is because we could all understand what it would be to have somebody we love taken from us in this fashion.”
Words are always inadequate in these kinds of situations. President Obama
Obama met with the family members at the University of Colorado Hospital, which treated 23 of the people injured in the mass shooting; 10 remain there, seven critically injured.
“It was an opportunity for families to describe how wonderful their brother or their son or daughter was. And the lives that they had touched and the dreams that they held for the future,” Obama said.
“I confessed to them that words are always inadequate in these kinds of situations,” he added.
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‘Perpetrator will feel full force of justice’
The shooting rampage, which happened during a screening of the new Batman film, left 12 people dead.
Mourners gathered at Aurora municipal centre on Sunday for a vigil.
Obama described the gathering as “an opportunity for everybody to come together,” adding “I hope all those in attendance understand that the entire country will be there in prayer and reflection today.”
The president also said the “perpetrator” of the massacre would feel “the full force of our justice system.”
Suspected gunman, James Holmes, was arrested on Friday.