An anguished mother focused her grief and anger at the White House after her 14-year-old daughter was among 17 people killed Wednesday in a Florida school shooting.
“How do we allow a gunman to come into our children’s school?” Lori Alhadeff, the mother of soccer-loving Alyssa Alhadeff, said Thursday when given a microphone on CNN, the video of her comments shows.
“The gunman, a crazy person, just walks right into the school, knocks down the window of my child’s door, and starts shooting — shooting her! And killing her!”
“President Trump, you say what can you do? You can stop the guns from getting into these children’s hands,” she said, before stating that she’d just spent two hours planning for her daughter’s burial.
“This is not fair to our families, that our children go to school and have to get killed,” she said. “President Trump, please do something! Do something! Action! We need it now! These kids need safety now!”
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
Trump said Thursday that he was “committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools, and tackle the difficult issue of mental health,” although without offering details. His comment likely referenced his Twitter post earlier in the day calling the alleged shooter, Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland where the attack occurred, “mentally disturbed.”
Cruz, who was detained shortly after the shooting, currently is being held without bond. He has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, and has not yet entered a plea. He previously had been expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons, authorities have said.
The pain of losing her daughter also threaded through a Facebook post written by Lori Alhadeef, although she paid tribute to Alyssa’s spirit as a means to inspire others.
“My daughter Alyssa was killed today by a horrific act of violence,” she wrote on Wednesday. “I just sent her to school and she was shot and killed.”
• For more compelling True Crime coverage, follow our Crime magazine on Flipboard
“Alyssa was a talented soccer player, so smart, and amazing personality, incredible creative writer, and all she had to offer the world was love. She believed in people for being so honest.”
She continued: “A knife is stabbed in my heart. I wish I could take those bullets for you.”
“I will always love you and your memory will live on forever.”
To others, she wrote: “Please kiss your children, tell them you love them, stand by them no matter what they want to be.”
“To Alyssa’s Friends honor Alyssa by doing something fabulous in your life. Don’t ever give up and inspire for greatness. Live for Alyssa! Be her voice and breathe for her. Alyssa loved you all forever!”