Tim Kaine Makes Unscheduled Appearance at the Scene of the Orlando Massacre

Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, paid a visit Monday afternoon to the scene of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida. Kaine, who was Governor of Virginia during the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, was visibly upset during his brief visit.

Accompanied by former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, herself badly wounded as a victim of a mass shooting at a constituent event in suburban Tucson in 2011, Sen. Kaine told reporters quietly, “This is a weird thing to say but I always hoped that the Virginia Tech one would be the worst one ever…as bad as that was, I hoped that nothing would ever eclipse it but, such as life we got work to do so.”

Kaine was also accompanied by Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, and Giffords, accompanied by her husband retired NASA Astronaut, Mark Kelly, walked into the Pulse nightclub parking lot to view the pictures, candles, and poster boards that lined rainbow colored walls filled with the hundreds of messages left by visitors to remember the lives lost in the shooting this past June. The Senator’s party was also accompanied by Orlando’s Police Chief, John Mina.

Kaine was in Orlando for a campaign event and had decided to make a quiet, unannounced stop at the site of the shooting, according to his aides, who noted that the Senator felt very strongly about the shooting at Pulse, which had left 49 people dead. An anti-gay hate crime, the attack on Pulse was the worst terror attack on America since 9/11 and the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

In July, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately with family members of Pulse victims, then also made an unscheduled stop to pay her respects at the Pulse memorial.

 

Video and screenshot via ABC News