The pin replicated the green Converse shoes that Maite Rodriguez, 10, was wearing she was killed in the shooting. Those shoes enabled Maite’s family to identify her body after her death.
In a video posted by the account PatriotTakes on Twitter, Boebert apologized for “the appearance” of “disrespecting a child” by throwing the pin into a trash can, but blamed her actions on the fact that she was wearing AirPods and said that the man who handed her the pin was someone who had approached her “aggressively” in the past.
“I was walking, had AirPods in, tried to tell the man that I was occupied, and he continued, and as he was handing me what turned out to be a memorial pin, I recognized him as a man who came at me very aggressively just a few weeks prior during a press conference,” Boebert said. “He was so aggressive that he was apprehended by another member and detained by Capitol Police officers.”
Boebert said she wanted to “make it very clear that I did not want to receive anything that this man had to give me, nor did I know what he was handing me.”
She added that she was “very vocal” about the Uvalde shooting and said that she had meant no disrespect by throwing away the pin.
But Elijah Pelton, the activist who handed Boebert the pin, told the Independent that Boebert has him confused with Jake Burdett, an activist who was pushed out of a press conference by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) in May for asking questions about Boebert’s divorce.
Below is a clip of Boebert throwing away the pin during last week’s encounter, and a close-up of the pin itself, which was attached to a card describing Maite’s story.