Biden prays in heartbroken Texas school massacre town

A distraught US President Joe Biden laid flowers and prayed Sunday at the makeshift shrine erected in Uvalde to the 19 children and two teachers murdered by a teen gunman after he stormed their elementary school.

Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, was in the small Texas town less than two weeks after making a similar trip to the site of another mass shooting -- this time targeting African Americans in a racist attack -- in Buffalo, New York.

Both wearing black, the first couple held hands in front of a memorial outside Robb Elementary School and walked slowly along the thicket of wreaths, bouquets, white crosses and blown-up photos of the slain children.

Biden, who buried his adult son Beau seven years ago after he died of cancer and also lost his first wife and infant daughter in a car accident, made the sign of the cross, appearing to wipe away a tear.

Reprising the increasingly familiar role of national mourner-in-chief, Biden, 79, then attended a Catholic Mass with local residents, ahead of meeting privately with first responders and grieving relatives of the dead.

"Our hearts are broken," Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller said at Sacred Heart church, where the Bidens sat at the front and the first lady reached out to lightly touch the hands of several worshippers.

Earlier, the arrival of the Bidens’ motorcade at the school was met with applause from a crowd. However, illustrating the tension in the town, there were boos at the appearance of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who strongly opposes new restrictions on gun ownership.

"We need changes," shouted one man. Biden was not scheduled to speak publicly in Texas, but on Saturday he renewed his call for Congress to overcome years of paralysis to toughen firearms regulations -- especially on weapons like the semi-automatic AR-15 that the gunman used in Uvalde. "We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer," Biden said. Harrowing accounts emerged of the ordeal faced by survivors of Tuesday’s attack, where the behavior of the police is under severe scrutiny.

Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was sitting in his fourth-grade classroom when the shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, barged in and announced: "You’re all going to die." Then "he just started shooting," Salinas told ABC News. Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19 police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour before finally breaching the room and killing Ramos, saying the officers mistakenly thought that he had stopped killing and was now barricaded. Parents have expressed fury and on Sunday the Justice Department announced an inquiry "to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare."