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October 25, 2022
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Robin Wolfenden was practicing yoga on her balcony on a spring morning in Nashville when she heard the sirens -- the sound of first responders rushing to the scene of America's latest school shooting, this time at nearby Covenant School.
The next day she laid six stones -- a Jewish tradition -- for the victims at the entrance of the property that houses the Covenant Presbyterian Church-affiliated elementary school where a 28-year-old former student broke in and stalked the halls, killing three staff and three young children.
"These kids are innocent children," Wolfenden told reporters, worried for her grandsons who are five and eight years old, only a few years younger than the students killed on Monday.
Mass shootings are grimly frequent in the United States, and Nashville residents were in shock Tuesday after their city joined the roster of those that have experienced an armed assault on a school, bringing a nationwide scourge close to home.
"It definitely hits home for me today," said Stacie Wilford, a nurse at a local medical facility and mother to an eight-year-old at a nearby school.
"I live a mile and a half away so it's in your back door and it's so scary," she told AFP.
"You drop your kids off in the mornings and you don't think that you could get a call like this. It's just devastating. That just -- I can't even fathom.”
She said the medical workers felt the impact of the shooting that ricocheted around the community.
"We're fixers," she said.
"When you're in the medical field, you want to fix it but when you get something like this, you can't fix it."
Carolyn Lucas's children also attend a school just a 10-minute walk away from the scene of the shooting. When she first heard there was a shooting in the area, Lucas was afraid it was at her kids' institution.
"I feel like our souls were shattered. It's unfathomable yet completely expected. You know, why wouldn't it happen to us?" she asked.
Despite the rate of gun violence in the country, Lucas said it's still easy to think it won't hit one's own community.
But, she said, "Of course it will. Gun violence sees no race or religion... it doesn't discriminate against anybody.
"We have to do better."
Kaylee Franzen, 22, who came with her 21-year-old friend Gabriella Massey to pay their respects, shares the same sentiment on gun violence, she said.
"You hear about this happening all the time. And I don't think we've ever been somewhere where it's been so close and that in itself was really heartbreaking," said Franzen, a senior at the private Christian Belmont University in Nashville.
She said the shooting made the two women want to do something, even just by bringing flowers to the site where residents left bouquets and stuffed toys at the church property entrance, which was guarded by a police cruiser Tuesday.
"Even though this doesn't necessarily help anything, it sends a message that things need to change, and that thoughts and prayers alone aren't something that fixes or can aid the situation," she said.
Cheryl Hill, 29, came to offer her prayers the night of the shooting, among the many who bowed their heads at the gates to the church.
She said she hadn't worried about something like this happening in her community, but was shaken like so many others.
"I was just in shock. It's just happening right up the street," she said. "It was just so close to home."
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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced off today during a public hearing where the Biden official was slammed over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Mr. Secretary, I want to say to you right now — your behavior is disgraceful. And the deaths, the children assaulted, the children raped. They are at your feet, and if you had integrity, you'd resign," Cruz said during the Senate Judiciary hearing.
"And I will tell you, the men and women of the Border Patrol, they've never had a political leader undermine them. They despise you, Mr. Secretary, because you're willing to let children be raped to follow political orders," Cruz continued. "This is a crisis. It's a disgrace. You won't even admit this human tragedy is a crisis."
When Cruz was finished, Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) gave Mayorkas the option of responding, but the DHS Secretary declined, saying, "What the senator said was revolting. I'm not going to address it."
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"Your refusal to do your job is revolting," Cruz fired back.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) then chimed in, saying that Cruz's treatment of Mayorkas was "disrespectful."
"I think it's [disrespectful] to suggest or imply that the root causes of a broken immigration system are so simple that they can be answered in two-and-a-half seconds or less," Padilla said.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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A single father, who was separated from his daughter and sentenced on Tuesday to two years in prison over "discrediting" the Russian army, has fled house arrest, officials said.
Alexei Moskalyov, 54, first came to the authorities' attention last year after his daughter Maria drew a picture at school showing missiles next to a Russian flag heading towards a woman and child standing by a Ukrainian flag.
A criminal case was later opened against him for allegedly criticising Russia's assault on Ukraine and on Tuesday he was handed a two-year jail sentence over comments on social media.
But in a dramatic turn of events, court officials said Moskalyov had fled house arrest.
Moskalyov has been separated from his 13-year-old daughter as punishment for his criticism of Kremlin policies, a first in Russia, experts say.
"The verdict was read out in the absence of the defendant, because he disappeared and did not appear at the hearing," Elena Mikhailovskaya, a spokeswoman for the Yefremov district court south of Moscow, told AFP.
Moskalyov's lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko said he was in a "state of shock".
"His disappearance is a total surprise for me. This has happened for the first time in my career," he told AFP.
He said that Moskalyov's daughter Maria could be sent to an orphanage "within a month".
Russia's top human rights organisation Memorial, which has been shuttered by Russian authorities, said on Facebook it considered Moskalyov a "political prisoner".
It added that separation from his daughter was a "repressive act and an attempt to intimidate all opponents of the war not only with prison terms but also the destruction of their families and pressure on children".
The Moskalyovs' case has garnered national attention and led to an online petition calling for the girl to be re-united with her father.
The pair hail from Yefremov, a small town of around 37,000 people some 300 kilometres (180 miles) south of Moscow.
The case against Moskalyov was opened after Maria's headmistress contacted the police about her picture with the flags and the missiles.
Police said an online search uncovered comments criticising Moscow's action in Ukraine on the social media profiles of the girl's father.
In early March, authorities placed Maria in a "rehabilitation centre" for minors, while Moskalyov was put under house arrest.
On Monday, prosecutors demanded a two-year prison term for the father.
Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine over a year ago public criticism of Moscow's offensive in the pro-Western country has been outlawed.
During the height of Stalin-era purges in the late 1930s thousands of children were taken away from their parents.
In modern Russia, the first recorded attempts to strip activists of parental rights were in Moscow in 2019. Prosecutors' attempts to punish two families for taking their children to political protests were not successful at the time, however.
Even Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner paramilitary force spearheading Russia's assault in eastern Ukraine, has voiced support for Maria and criticised the local authorities.
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