Meghan Markle Visited Uvalde to Honor School Shooting Victims

Meghan Markle, the wife of Britain's Prince Harry, places flowers as she mourns at a makeshift memorial outside Uvalde County Courthouse in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022. - Grief at the massacre of 19 children at the elementary school in Texas spilled into confrontation on May 25, as angry questions mounted over gun control -- and whether this latest tragedy could have been prevented. The tight-knit Latino community of Uvalde on May 24 became the site of the worst school shooting in a decade, committed by a disturbed 18-year-old armed with a legally bought assault rifle.

(Image credit: Photo by Chandan Khanna / Getty)

published 27 May 2022

On Thursday, Meghan Markle discreetly visited Uvalde, Texas to pay her respects to the victims of this week's school shooting.

The Duchess of Sussex, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and a baseball cap, lay roses at the memorial that popped up in the hours after a gunman opened fire in Robb Elementary School, killing 19 children and two teachers and injuring 17 others.

Markle walked around the memorial, reading the names of the victims written on white crosses, and kneeled in front of them in reflection.

Memorial for Texas school shooting victims

A spokesperson for the duchess told Town & Country that she came to Uvalde in her "personal capacity as a mother" to "offer her condolences and support in person to a community experiencing unimaginable grief." Markle is mother to two young children, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 11 months.

Following the mass shooting, people drove from sometimes hundreds of miles away to donate blood at a community center that was holding a blood drive to help the injured victims, according to TODAY.

Markle visited the center's kitchen on the day to donate food for the blood donors: sandwiches, beverages and desserts.

"I had no idea who she was," a volunteer, Gloria Contreras, told BuzzFeed News. "She just was carrying on a conversation like her and I knew each other for years. We were just talking about, you know, the situation and what happened, what we were doing here. I told her about us giving out water to the people and feeding them."

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.