There was pain when school shooting victims couldn’t be helped at the hospital

The Nashville school shooting that killed six people: One person injured in the shooting, and three more died in the same day as a church shooting in Nashville

As more details emerge about how a deadly mass shooting unfolded inside a private Christian school in Nashville, a former police officer who provided active shooter training at the school said the quick-thinking actions of teachers who locked down classrooms helped save lives.

Four miles from Vanderbilt’s campus, a 28-year-old shooter had opened fire at the Covenant School, a private elementary school on the grounds of a church in Nashville’s Green Hills neighborhood. The people who were killed were the head of school, custodian, substitute teacher, three students and Evelyn Dieckhaus.

“Their ability to execute literally flawlessly under that amount of stress while somebody trying to murder them and their children, that is what made the difference here,” Fidler said.

Six people were killed in the Monday morning school shooting. They were three 9-year-old students and they were Evelyn, William and Hallie. Police named the dead as Cynthia Peak, a substitute teacher, Mike Hill, a custodian, and a head of the school.

All of the victims who were struck by gunfire had been in an open area or hallway, said Fidler, who did a walk-through of the school with officials Wednesday.

“The only victims this shooter was able to get to were victims that were stuck in some sort of open area or hallway,” Fidler said. Several were able to leave safely. The ones that couldn’t do that safely did exactly what they were taught and trained to do.”

“We had heroic officers that went in harm’s way to stop this and we could have been talking about more tragedy than what we are,” Drake told CNN Wednesday.

In Uvalde, Texas, the law enforcement response was delayed for more than an hour before the shooter was killed. In Uvalde, there were 21 people dead.

Monday’s school shooting in Nashville was the deadliest US school shooting since last May’s massacre in Uvalde. It also marked the 19th shooting at a school or university in just the past three months that left at least one person wounded, a CNN count shows.

Koonce, the head of The Covenant School, spent her last moments trying to protect the children in her care, according to a Nashville city councilman.

A witness said that Koonce heard the shots and abruptly ended the call while she was in the office. Russ Pulley said the assumption was that she headed towards the shooter. He did not identify the witness.

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said he can’t confirm how Koonce died but said, “I do know she was in the hallway by herself. I am certain that there was a confrontation. You can see how she is lying in the hallway.

“It’s such a tragedy and felt so deeply by everyone here,” Nashville resident Eliza Hughes said. “Nashville is a close tight-knit community. We are definitely affected by the tragedy. It is an terrible situation.

But as details of the pre-planning are uncovered, it’s still unclear what motivated the attack. There was no indication that Hale had problems while at The Covenant, Drake said.

Drake said that the FBI, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and police have been combing through the maps and writings that Hale left.

According to Drake, the maps had a display of entry into the school and a route that would be taken for whatever was going to be carried out.

The shooter is also believed to have had weapons training and had arrived at the school heavily armed and prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement, police have said.

Seven guns were kept hidden from Hale’s parents, but they were legally purchased by Hale over the last three years. Three of the weapons, including an AR-15 rifle, were used in the attack Monday.

Shooting a Woman in the Arms: A Nashville Police Officer’s Perspective on a Shooting in the Heart of Memphis, Tennessee

Tennessee does not have a “red flag” law that would allow a judge to temporarily seize guns from someone who is believed to be a threat to themselves or others.

Hale’s childhood friend, Averianna Patton, told CNN on Tuesday the killer sent her disturbing messages minutes before the attack, saying “I’m planning to die today” and it would be on the news.

She called the Sheriff’s Office in Nashville and was on hold for 7 minutes. By then, the shooting had already started.

“The moment we got the call, we responded immediately to the scene. Officers pulled up, were taking gunfire, pulled the gun out, went inside, did not wait,” Drake said.

Hale was referred to by police as a female shooter, and later it was revealed she was a trans person. A Hale spokesman told CNN that Hale used male pronouns on her social media profile.

The police chief also addressed the community, saying that a school shooting like the one officers faced at The Covenant School on Monday is a moment officers have trained for but hoped would never come.

“Violence has visited our city and brought heartache and pain. Tennessee Representative Reverend Harold M. Love, Jr. told the group that they are still looking for hope during the time of grief.

When a gunshot wound falls: A pediatric surgeon’s reaction to seeing the page on the hospital emergency room page in Nashville, U.S.

On Monday morning, Dr. Joseph Fusco had begun what seemed like a normal workweek at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, where he specializes in children’s cancer and neonatal surgeries.

Soon after 10 a.m., after his routine morning rounds, the pediatric surgeon was on his way to the operating room when a page alerted him: An ambulance was en route to the Nashville hospital carrying a gravely wounded gunshot victim.

In total, five of the victims of Monday’s school shooting were transported to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and its affiliated children’s hospital, hospital officials say.

“You’re in a bit of shock when you get something like that,” Fusco said, recalling his reaction to seeing the pages. “This should never happen to children.”

You’re ready to go. We’re so well-prepared to help. We have had nurses going to the emergency department from home. “Everyone is there,” he said. Instead, all they were left with was “the feeling of sheer helplessness when you have patients that come in with injuries that are just completely unsurvivable.”

“The wounds on these children’s bodies are not gruesome, but I think that injuries from those weapons are really unsurvivable for children,” he said.

Most firearm deaths and injuries are caused by handguns, whose bullets typically pierce straight through targets. Military-style rifles have the power to kill bones and vital organs.

Gunshot wounds are a fact of life for trauma surgeons in major U.S. cities, even for pediatric surgeons like Fusco — firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., killing thousands each year.

Fusco hadn’t seen a child with something like this before, but he had trained and experience as a surgeon.

I’ve been a doctor for 20 years. You’re trained, especially back then, to kind of just be tough, and just deal with it. And I think we’ve realized that’s not the right way to approach it,” Jahangir said. We’re not immune to all the emotions that happen.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/31/1167375561/nashville-school-shooting-vanderbilt-hospital

Nashville hospital reorganized after a Las Vegas music festival, and it’s causing a lot of trouble for young children, as reported by the American National Public Radio Radio Rescue Agency

Officials at VUMC overhauled the hospital’s mass casualty response plan after a man opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017, killing 60 and injuring hundreds.

The hospital is located in central Nashville, a city famous for its own vibrant music culture. “We said, you know, we’re not immune to this,” said Jahangir, who helped lead the changes to the plan.

Jahangir said that the plan was put into action a number of times each year. It’s possible that the mass casualty event is a tornado. Other times it’s a bad accident on the interstate. Occasionally, it’s a mass shooting — though school shootings are rare.

“It became evident that this was serious and this was maybe a little different from what we’ve experienced before, in that it’s what I think many of us, especially those of us with young children, always dread,” he said of the alerts Monday.

On Monday, the alert had ended by the early afternoon, once it was clear that no more victims would be arriving, meaning the staff and facilities on standby — the surgeons, the nurses, the blood bank, the operating rooms — would no longer be needed.

About 20 doctors and nurses gathered in a conference room near the emergency department to process the morning’s events. Some people sat down quietly. Others were crying. Fusco said it was difficult to be in that room, with people being so upset. “The silence is deafening.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/31/1167375561/nashville-school-shooting-vanderbilt-hospital

The First Evelyn Dieckhaus: A Family Burial in Memory of the Sixth Gun Shooting Victims of the Terrorist Attack

As the city mourns the six victims of the shootings, plans for their funerals have been set. On Friday, the first Evelyn Dieckhaus will be held, and she’ll be laid to rest Saturday in a private family burial. Others will continue over the weekend and into next week.