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Meghan Markle, the wife of Britain's Prince Harry, places flowers as she mourns at a makeshift memorial outside Uvalde County Courthouse in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022.

UVALDE, Texas — Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, told the director of a community center in Uvalde, Texas, that she held her children Archie and Lilibet “a little bit tighter” when she learned about the elementary school shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children.

On Thursday, Meghan quietly visited the Herby Ham Activity Center, which hosted an emergency blood drive to help victims of the shooting. Director Sue Rankin told BuzzFeed News that late in the morning on Thursday, a member of the duchesses’ security team walked into her office and told her that Meghan was in Uvalde.

“She wanted to come by and just see everything that was going on with the blood drive, and to help — her whole thing was she wanted to help,” Rankin said. “She was going to be incognito, he told me that she was going to be wearing a T-shirt and ripped blue jeans and a hat and a mask and no one was going to — he didn’t want anyone to know who she was because she did not want the press attention.”

Rankin said she was told Meghan was on her way to a nearby H-E-B grocery store to pick up food platters for the center’s volunteers and people who were giving blood.