A 28-year-old heavily armed desperately shot three children and three adult school staffers on Monday at a private Christian school the suspect once attended in Tennessee’s capital city before police killed the attacker, authorities said.
The motive of the attack was not immediately known, but the suspect had drawn detailed maps of the school, including entrance points for the school building, and left behind a “manifesto” and other handwriting that investigators were examining, Police Chief John Drake told reporters.
The latest in an epidemic of lethal mass gun violence that has come to routinely terrorize even the most cherished of US institutions spread on a warm spring morning at The Covenant School, whose students consist mostly of elementary school-age children.
Drake identified the 28-year-old suspect as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a resident of the Nashville area, and referred to the attacker by female pronouns. The Police chief said the suspect identified as transgender but provided no other clarity.
The Tennessean newspaper quoted a police spokesperson as saying Hale used he/him pronouns. Hale used male pronouns on a LinkedIn page that listed recent jobs in graphic design and grocery delivery.
Police later released a school video showing the assaulter shooting through glass doors with gunfire and walking the corridors, pointing a semi-automatic rifle. Hale wore a black vest over a white T-shirt, camouflage pants, and a backward red baseball cap in a video that showed only the shooter in the frame.
Addressing an early evening news conference, Drake said police were working on a theory about what may have poured the shooting and would “put that out as soon as we can.” He said the suspect had no known previous criminal history.
In a subsequent NBC News television interview, Drake said investigators thought the shooting stemmed from “some resentment” the suspect harbored “for having to go to that school” as a younger person.
The police chief did not determine the character of such presumed resentment, or whether it had anything to do with the suspect’s gender identity or the Christian orientation of the school. Drake said the school was singled out for invasion but the individual victims were targeted at random.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department started receiving calls at 10:13 a.m. of a shooter at the school, and reaching officers reported hearing gunfire coming from the school building’s second floor, police spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters.
Two officers from a five-member team shot the assailant in a lobby area, and the suspect was pronounced dead by 10:27 a.m. Aaron added that the police department response was swift. Police said the suspect was armed with two assault-type guns and a 9 mm pistol.
The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9, along with staffers Mike Hill, 61, a school custodian, Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher, and Katherine Koonce, 60, listed on the Covenant website as “head of school.”
The Covenant School, established in 2001, is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville with about 200 students, according to the school’s website. It serves preschool through sixth graders and held an active shooter training program in 2022, WTVF-TV reported.
