Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Chicago on Tuesday some 24-hours after a mass shooting that killed six people and injured at least 30 more. All the victims were lining a Fourth of July parade route in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood.
“I am going to travel to Chicago tomorrow morning to address the National Association of Educators — NEA,” Harris told reporters after visiting with firefighters in Santa Monica, California.
The New York Post reported Harris did not say if she would spend time with victims of the tragedy.
“Part of what I’m preparing — sadly, I was preparing it before, but it’s resonant every day — is a whole section on what our teachers go through. They go to school to learn how to teach our children to inspire their ambition to create the future generations of leaders and our teachers are also in training to deal with an active shooter,” Harris said.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the media about the morning’s mass shooting in a Chicago suburb after greeting firefighters at Santa Monica Fire Station No. 2 during an off-the-record stop on July 4, 2022 in Santa Monica, California.(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty)
“Our teachers are having to learn how to put a tourniquet on a kid if they have been shot. And so when we look at the issue of gun violence, and when we look at the dangers that it presents to communities, it ranges and it is something that we should take very seriously.”
The trip was announced on Friday before the shooting.
President Joe Biden on Monday said he and first lady Jill Biden were “shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day.”
People check their belongings after a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, Ill., a suburb of Chicago on Monday, July 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
As Breitbart News reported, the suspected shooter has since been arrested by Chicago law enforcement.
During a press conference, Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen announced the suspected gunman was apprehended around 6:30 p.m. ET by North Chicago police officers.