JULIE PACE, Associated Press
AURORA, Colo. (AP) - President Barack Obama arrived in Colorado to meet with families of those gunned down Friday in a movie theater.
Air Force One touched down late Sunday afternoon at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora. The president's hastily arranged visit includes a private meeting with the victims' loved ones and meetings with state and local officials about the shooting early Friday morning at a busy multiplex.
Obama met with the family members Sunday at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, which treated 23 of the people injured in the mass shooting; 10 remain there, seven hurt critically. The massacre left 12 people dead, dozens injured and a nation in stunned sorrow.
He told reporters after the meeting that he came "not as president but as a father and a husband." He said "we can all understand what it would be to have someone taken from us in this fashion."
It is Obama's second trip in less than a month to comfort Colorado residents. He made a quick visit in late June to Colorado Springs, where hundreds of homes were destroyed in the most devastating wildfire in the state's history.
The shock of Friday's mass shooting brought the presidential campaign to a standstill for the weekend.
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Associated Press