Political Quotes

“I come here with a heavy heart. On April 30, at 4:40 p.m., a shooting occurred in the Kennedy Building on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It is a college campus. It is only about 15 minutes from my house. The shooting occurred on the last day of classes. When a lot of family members and friends were thinking about graduation and thinking about what they were going to do over the summer, their lives were shattered. I am here to celebrate the lives of two of the victims. Before I do that, I thank all of the first responders and the people on campus who did an extraordinary job. The first among them would be Chancellor Dubois, and there are so many more first responders. What makes this particularly difficult for me is the loss of life of two young men--one who was 19, Ellis ``Reed'' Parlier, and Riley Howell, who was 21 years old. These kids were in school. One, Ellis, enrolled in 2017. He loved video games. He wanted to be a video game developer. He was a volunteer. He actually tutored middle schoolers on computer programming. His professor described him as independent and motivated. Another young man, Riley, who has an extraordinary story within this horrible act, enrolled in UNC Charlotte in 2018. He had gone to A-B Tech before that. He was in environmental studies. He loved the outdoors. He loved Star Wars. He loved pizza and playing soccer. He was just a normal kid who was going to college.…”