PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – A campaign video for former Vice President Joe Biden has gone viral that features the son of one of the victims of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland.
Arizona congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, herself a shooting victim, posted the video on her Twitter account. The clip was from an event she hosted that year not long after the tragedy. The ad has been viewed more than 1 million times.
I’ll never forget the comfort that @JoeBiden brought Corey after he lost his dad in the Parkland shooting. This powerful new ad from @Your_Americans illustrates Joe’s character. He has the compassion and leadership to bring this country together. pic.twitter.com/40Uy6mXyDd
— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) September 16, 2020
The video, which features Biden comforting Corey Hixon, is now part of a campaign ad. It was shot just one month after the mass shooting, when emotions were running high.
We caught up with Debbi Hixon as she was in the midst of campaigning for a seat on the Broward County School Board.
“It was so hard for me to comfort him because I was lost myself,” Hixon said about her son. Hhusband and father, Chris Hixon, the athletic director at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, died trying to save students during the Parkland massacre on Feb. 14, 2018.
Debbi and Corey were at a March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C., when Biden approached victims' family members, but he skipped the Hixons.
“He turned to leave and then Corey said, ‘Wait, I wanted to meet him!’ and he heard him and he turned around and walked back over to him. To have the vice president take that time in a whole room full of other people, it was such a blessing and something that Corey really needed,” Debbi said.
Corey, who has special needs due to being born with a rare genetic disorder, Kabuki syndrome, recalled the moment Biden said he wanted to meet the family.
"(He said) ‘This is the family? Yes, I’m going to meet them. I know because my wife died, my son, so I know what you’re going through,’ " Corey said.
Corey said that Biden related his own experience of losing his wife and his youngest child in a car crash, and later, losing his son to brain cancer.
After the Parkland tragedy, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump also comforted families. They visited surviving Parkland victims, who were in the hospital a few days after the massacre.
Debbi Hixon told Local 10 that she met Donald Trump and he was very polite, but she supports the former vice president, saying he’s a candidate who is “compassionate and has the ability to unite a divided country.”