A psychic who runs a customised-coffin business has promised to donate caskets to the victims of the Texas school shooting, all decorated specifically for each murdered child.
Trey Ganem owns SoulShine Industries, which will provide coffins for 19 victims of Tuesday's shooting in Uvalde, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
Ganem, 50, told The New York Post that he is covering the costs of the coffins (which typically retail for about $3,400 (£2,692) each) after meeting with the families of 19 of the victims – 18 students and one teacher.
Among the designs he is featuring on the coffins are dinosaurs, butterflies and scenes from popular TikTok videos.
“I was called by a few people who needed caskets urgently, and the whole thing really tore me up so I decided to help,” said Ganem, who is the star of a US reality show called Trey the Texas Medium.
“We started working on the caskets on Friday, and we have eight of them painted. We are still talking to the families as we speak, and they are at the funeral homes walking through and looking at examples."
Ganem is making the customised coffins for 17 children as well as fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles.
He claims to regularly communicate with the deceased while working on caskets, including victims of Tuesday’s shooting, although he declined to elaborate further.
“It helps me create the caskets,” he said. “It’s been a beautiful thing for me to hear all of their stories,” he said. “I feel like I have become a part of their family.”
Ramos shot his own grandmother before heading to nearby Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where he massacred innocent staff and children aged between nine and 11.
He had written a warning saying he was going to 'shoot an elementary school' on Facebook 15 minutes before opening fire.
The 18-year-old, armed with an AR-15, began the killing spree after barricading himself inside a fourth grade classroom. He was eventually killed by a police tactical unit.
It was the deadliest school shooting since the eerily similar Sandy Hook massacre almost a decade ago in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza first killed his mother before killing 26 people.
A law enforcement official said on Friday that police who waited at least 40 minutes for backup before entering the classroom made the “wrong decision”.
The incident has shocked the world and seen renewed calls for gun laws to be reviewed.
