A gunman barricaded himself inside a fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas, and started fire, killing 19 students and two instructors.
The shooting at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday happened only days before the school year ended.
What should have been a happy occasion quickly devolved into misery and anguish.
That night, families met at a civic hall to find out if their loved ones had survived.
Some were tasked with providing DNA swabs to aid police in determining whether their relatives were among the victims.