There are a number of questions about the school shooting in Nashville
The Nashville Police Department Investigates the Targeting of a Mass Shooting with an Assist-Style Rifle in a K-12 School
The church building is a target of the shooter, according to Nashville police. We don’t know if the shooter was targeting any of the six people who were murdered.
A video released by Metro Nashville Police shows a masked man walking through the hallways and pointing a gun at another person while shooting through glass doors inside a school.
The parents of the shooter, identified as Audrey Hale, told police they knew Hale had bought and sold one weapon and believed that was the extent of it, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Tuesday.
The ex- student had a rifle, gun, and pistol in her possession, and was receiving treatment for an emotional disorder.
Writings left behind by Hale revealed the attack “was calculated and planned,” police said. The shooter had a drawing of how to enter the building and “assaults that would take place,” Drake said at a Tuesday news conference.
There have been at least six other mass shootings with assault-style rifles in K-12 schools over the last decade, dating to the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, according to a CNN analyst.
The head of the school, the custodian and a substitute teacher were the ones who got word that three young children and a custodian were lost.
“All of Tennessee was hurt yesterday, but some parents woke up without children, children woke up without parents and without teachers, and spouses woke up without their loved ones,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who also lost a close family friend in the shooting.
Averianna told CNN on Tuesday that the shooter sent an alarming message to her before 10 a.m. Monday that said he was planning to kill himself.
Patton, a Nashville radio host, told CNN she was the shooter’s childhood basketball teammate but they hadn’t spoken in years and is unsure why she received the message. She contacted the suicide prevention line and the sheriff’s office in Nashville at 10:24 a.m.
The Shooting of a Black Student at the Nossi School of Art & Design: A CNN Video Recording from Engelbert and Collazo
Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the president of the school confirmed to CNN. Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper, a LinkedIn profile says.
Hale was said to be a female shooter and at an evening news conference, it was said she was a trans woman. A Hale spokesman told CNN that he used male pronouns on a social media profile.
The footage, from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, begins with Engelbert arriving at the school to find a woman outside who says the school is on lockdown but there are two children unaccounted for.
After an officer gets a key to open a door, a group of other officers enter the school and immediately look for the suspect in some of the classrooms that are empty.
As they clear the rooms, officers hear gunfire from upstairs and rush up to the second floor, where Engelbert, armed with an assault-style rifle, fired multiple times at a person near a large window, who dropped to the ground, the video shows.
The person was shot with a handgun, yelled “Stop moving”, and then appeared to be dead. The officers then approach the person, move a gun away and radio “Suspect down! They were suspect down!
The police chief said he didn’t have a problem with the 11 minutes between when police received the first call and when they arrived at the school. But we always want to get better. There are a lot of things that could have happened when we were able to get there, because we always want to get there in two or three minutes.
The three 9-year-old students killed in the shooting were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Dickinson and Hallie Schmoos, the daughter of a church pastor. Also killed were Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher; Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of the school; and Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian, police said.
Sissy Goff, one of Koonce’s friends, went to the reunification center after the shooting and suspected something was wrong when she didn’t see Koonce there.
I had a hunch that she would have been there in front of the people to keep them safe, because she was so kind and strong.
Peak was supposed to go to dinner with Maria Lee at her house on Monday evening, according to Bill Lee.
Maria and her family have been friends with Cindy Peak and other teachers at the school for decades.
Families of the victims have released statements as they grieve. Hill was described as a father of seven children and grandfather of 14 who loved to cook and spend time with his family, according to a statement obtained by CNN.
“It is important that we stand together on this dark day for Nashville,” he said in the tweet. The survivors of the shooting have a fund set up by the city.
Hate Crime: The Tennessee Department of Education and Public Safety to investigate the ‘Galaxy’ Killing at a High School
The shooter had left behind “a manifesto,” Drake said, which included a map of the school, with details about how he would enter and carry out an attack.
Drake couldn’t say if Hale targeted the school for religious reasons. He added that police are working with the FBI to fully examine Hale’s writings.
Similarly, being under a doctor’s care alone wouldn’t have met the threshold to prohibit the sale of weapons to Hale. Tennessee law does not allow the sale of guns to people who are found to pose a danger to themselves or others.
Drake said police would have tried to get weapons if they got a report that Hale was threatening to kill someone.
On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., took that to mean the attack was “targeted, that is, against Christians” and began calling for federal agencies to investigate the shooting as a hate crime.
“Why do I keep saying that if it isn’t happening?” asked President Biden on Tuesday, as he followed his call for an assault weapons ban.
“I don’t see any real role we could do other than mess things up,” he said on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. “I don’t think you’re going to stop the gun violence. Change people’s hearts is something that you have to do.
Everyone agrees that every person has great value. And we will act to prevent this from happening again,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, in a Tuesday evening video address.
He wasn’t sure what the action would look like. Lee has been a vocal opponent of gun control throughout his time in office, calling for every school to have a resource officer staffed on campus.
Nashville, Tennesse, Exactly Exactly When a Tennessee Judge Dropped His 21 to 18 Carry Age on August 16, 2011: A Case Study of a Shooter Who Killed Seven People
If anything, the ruby red state appears to be leaning further into its reputation as a gun-friendly state. A federal judge paved the way for Tennessee to drop its carry age from 21 to 18 as Nashville mourned and protested on Tuesday.
The shooter who killed seven people at The Covenant School in Nashville used three of seven legally purchased firearms.
“It indicates that they were prepared to wreak a lot more havoc than they were able to actually carry out thanks to the relatively quick action from the police,” said CNN analyst Stephen Gutowski, founder and editor of The Reload, a firearms website.
After meeting with the shooter’s parents and school officials, authorities have yet to uncover any specific issues or problems in the attacker’s past, according to Drake.
The shooter is believed to have had weapons training, Aaron told CNN. The department is working to determine when and where that training would have taken place, he added.
Gutowski said that the type of firearm they use is, sadly, only likely to marginally change the outcome.
“There’s no infrastructure for concerned people,” Clayton said. “Clearly, this individual’s parents were concerned and, by all accounts, having a system that they could use to alert local authorities or to get a petition from a judge to have guns removed is certainly something I think a lot of folks wish would have been available.”
The shooter fired a number of rounds at several classrooms, but did not hit any students because the teachers knew how to protect their students in those rooms.
