Matthew McConaughey is doing what he can to help after this week’s tragic school shooting that shook his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.
After Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 21 people — including 19 students and two adults — the Academy Award winner, 52, paid a visit to the community with Rep. Tony Gonzales on Friday at Uvalde Civic Center, PEOPLE has confirmed. During the visit, he met with families and those affected by the tragedy, including parents who lost their kids during the shooting.
“Thank you Matthew for helping to heal our community. Your visit brought so many smiling faces to Uvalde. See you soon my friend,” Gonzales, 41, wrote on Twitter, also sharing photos of the visit.
McConaughey’s trip came after he shared a heartfelt statement in response to the attack. “Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us,” he wrote in part.
“This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better. We must do better,” McConaughey added. “Action must be taken so that no parent has to experience what the parents in Uvalde and the others before them have endured.”
The Dazed and Confused actor was born in Uvalde, where he lived for much of his childhood. His mother Kay McCabe taught at St. Philip’s Episcopal School, about a mile away from Robb Elementary.
Since Tuesday’s shooting, President Joe Biden has also spoken out about the attack, expressing his anger over the country’s ongoing gun violence.
On Wednesday, he signed an executive order on policing and public safety and pushed for “commonsense gun reforms.”
“As a nation, I think we all must be there for them,” Biden said. “And we must ask: When in God’s name will we do what needs to be done to, if not completely stop, fundamentally change the amount of the carnage that goes on in this country?”
The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety has said that Chief of Police Pete Arredondo made the “wrong decision” in not confronting the shooter until more than 40 minutes after he entered the school.
“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision,” Col. Steven McCraw told reporters. “It was a wrong decision. There’s no excuse for that. We believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can. When there’s an active shooter, the rules change.”
According to McCraw, the shooter barricaded himself inside a classroom that they believed was otherwise empty. All of the victims were reportedly found in that room.
One police officer told PEOPLE that they stood outside the school for more than an hour, waiting for a signal to go in and neutralize the gunman.
The shooter, who has been identified as Uvalde resident Salvador Ramos, 18, was found dead at the scene after abandoning his vehicle nearby and entering the school at around 11:30 a.m. local time.
Before arriving at the school, Ramos shot his grandmother at her residence, and she was subsequently airlifted to a hospital.
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