Kim Kardashian is trying to help the incarcerated father of a Uvalde, Texas, school shooting victim — by asking prison officials to free him so that he can attend the child’s funeral.
“This is Eliahana ‘Ellie’ Cruz Torres, 10 years old, and one of the 19 victims of the shooting in Uvalde, TX,” Kardashian said in a tweet. “Her family are desperately hoping that her father, who is incarcerated for a non violent drug offense, be granted temporary release so that he can attend her funeral.”
Eli Torres is an inmate at a federal prison in Kentucky for a gang-related drug-trafficking offense, the San Antonio Express News reported.
“So far their requests have been denied. I ask the @officialFBOP to grant Eli Torres temporary release so that he can say his last goodbye to his baby girl. Every parent deserves that right.”
Kardashian’s plea may have come too late. She sent the tweet Thursday, the same day as Eliahana’s funeral. Her 11 a.m. service went on without her father.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons denied Torres’ request to attend the funeral in person, but did allow him to watch a livestream of his daughter’s service from behind bars, according to the Express News.
“The choices I made, it cost me,” he said. “I could have prevented this from happening, somehow, some way, as a father,” he told the Express News. “I could have stopped it somehow. Protected her.”
In recent years, Kardashian has used her reality TV platform and millions of social media followers to draw attention to many social causes and advocate for prison inmates. Most recently in Texas, Kardashian lent her support to Texas death row inmate Melissa Lucio. The Texas mom was convicted of killing her 2-year-old, but will have her conviction reviewed in light of new evidence.