The suspect in the shooting was a graduate of Covenant School in Nashville, and she was shot and killed by police.
Before carrying out the most recent mass shooting in a country increasingly shaken by school violence, the suspect in the Monday shooting at a Nashville school had prepared a detailed map of the campus, including potential entranceways, and conducted surveillance.
Nashville School Shooting Suspect
The attacker was armed with two “assault-style” weapons — a rifle and a pistol — as well as a handgun, investigators said. At least two of them were considered legally acquired in the vicinity of Nashville.
Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old, as well as adults Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61, were named as the victims.
On its website, the 2001-founded Protestant organization The Covenant School lists Katherine Koonce as its head of school. Her LinkedIn page claims she has overseen the institution since July 2016.
About the shooter’s gender, the police provided conflicting information. Police had been identifying the gunman as a 28-year-old woman for hours before finally naming her Audrey Hale.
The police chief later revealed that Hale was transsexual during a late-afternoon press conference. Don Aaron, a police spokeswoman after the press conference, declined to provide into more detail on Hale’s present identification.
The Covenant School, which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade and about 50 staff members, was attacked at a time when communities across the country are reeling from a wave of school violence, including the shooting that injured two administrators last week in Denver and the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year.
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US School Killings
Based on a database kept by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University in collaboration, there had been seven mass killings at K–12 schools since 2006 in which four or more persons were killed within a 24-hour period. The shooters were men in every one of them.
The database excludes school shootings with fewer than four fatalities, which have increased significantly in recent years. For instance, within the span of just one week, there were two days apart school shootings in the Dallas and Denver areas.
Monday’s tragedy occurred over around 14 minutes. At 10:13 am, police first received a report of an active shooter. As officers heard gunshots coming from the second level of the school, they started emptying the first story, according to Aaron during a news briefing.
At 10:27 am, a five-person team of officers responded with two shots, Aaron said, killing the suspect. Glass fragments caused a hand injury to one police officer. No police officers were present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting, according to Aaron, because it is administered by a church.
With their school encircled by police cars, other pupils fled to safety on Monday and made their way to a neighboring church to meet up with their families. They did so while holding hands.
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