The Atlanta School Shooting on Monday, Oct. 13, 3:30 p.m. Audrey Hale and a friend of a 12-year-old student
As a Nashville community tries to come to terms with the deaths of six people, including three 9-year-old children and three adults, police are uncovering more information about the shooter.
The attack at The Covenant School happened over 14 minutes early on Monday, with the shooter firing into the school and killing six people before being shot dead by police officers.
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.
A former student of the school was in possession of a rifle, a pistol, and a gun that was designed for military use.
According to police, Hale had mapped out a possible attack location in Nashville and had been writing about the shooting at the school. Hale’s childhood friend revealed that the shooter sent her messages before the attack.
The Gun Violence Archive tracks over 130 mass shootings in the US this year. And, as with these previous shootings, lawmakers were once again quick to concede that Monday’s act of violence likely won’t be enough to shake off the stalemate on gun reform.
Three young children, the head of their school and a substitute teacher were among those who were lost when The Covenant School was evacuated on Monday.
The governor of Tennessee said that some parents woke up without their children, while some children woke up without parents or teachers.
The shooter sent a disturbing Instagram message to a childhood friend just before 10 a.m. Monday, saying “I’m planning to die today” and that it would be on the news, the friend Averianna Patton told CNN on Tuesday.
The shooter and his childhood basketball teammate, who had not spoken in years, got in touch with her but she did not know why. Patton said she then called a suicide prevention line and the Nashville Davidson County Sheriff’s Office at around 10:13 a.m.
The shooting of a substitute teacher at the Nossi college of Art & Design: a trans person or a “female shooter”
Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the president of the school confirmed to CNN. Hale was a part-time grocery shopper and a graphic designer.
At the evening news conference, police referred to Hale as a “female shooter,” and added that Hale was a trans person. Hale used male pronouns on a social media profile, a spokesperson told CNN when asked to clarify.
The footage begins with a woman outside the school saying there are two children missing and that the school is on a hold, but that no one is inside.
A group of five officers enter the school with sirens wailing and look for a suspect in several empty classrooms after the officer gets a key to open a door.
The officers saw gunfire coming from the upstairs and went up the stairs to the second floor where they found Engelbert with an assault-style rifle and a person who dropped to the ground.
Collazo then appeared to shoot the person on the ground four times with a handgun, yelling “Stop moving!” The person is approached by the officers, they move a gun away, and they radio “Suspect down!” Someone is a suspect down.
The police chief told reporters that he had no problem with the gap between when police received the first call and when they got to the school. But we always want to get better. We always want to get there in a couple of minutes, but there are a lot of other things that could have happened.
The victims of the shooting included three 9-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of lead church pastor Chad Scruggs. Police said that Cynthia Peak, a substitute teacher, was one of the people killed.
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.
She would have been in front handling everything, so she had a feeling that she wouldn’t have been there.
Peak, a substitute teacher, was best friends with Tennessee First Lady Maria Lee and was supposed to go over to the Lees’ home for dinner Monday evening, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said in a video statement Tuesday.
“Maria woke up this morning without her best friend, Cindy Peak, who was a teacher at the same school with Maria and her husband, Kaunon,” the governor said.
As they mourn their loved ones, families of the victims have released statements. The family of Hill said in a statement that he was a father of seven children and grandfather to 14 who loved to cook.
The city of Nashville is planning a vigil on Wednesday night to mourn those lost in the mass shooting, according to Nashville Mayor John Cooper. It will take place at One Public Square park at 5:30 p.m. local time.
A Call for Action to End the War on Guns: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the High-Tennor President Bill Biden
The shooter had left a map of the school and details about how he would attack the school in a manifesto, according to Drake.
Drake could not say if Hale had targeted the school for religious reasons. He said the police and the FBI are looking into Hale’s writings.
Tennessee does not have a “red flag” law that would allow a judge to temporarily seize guns from someone believed to be a threat to themselves or others.
Drake said if police received a report that Hale was threatening to kill someone, they would’ve tried to get those weapons.
Josh Hawley called for federal agencies to investigate the shooting as a hate crime after he took that to mean the attack was against Christians.
On Tuesday, President Biden followed his consistent call for an assault weapons ban with a rhetorical question: “Why do I keep saying this if it’s not happening?” he asked.
“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 can stop the gun violence. You’ve got to change people’s hearts.”
We all agree that every human is worth something. In his Tuesday evening video address, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee promised to act to prevent this from happening again.
He didn’t clarify what that 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.
Shooting Them: How to Obtain a Gun Without a Background Check and Where to Place It? Investigating the Nashville Shooter’s Assailant
“It’s perfectly legal in Tennessee to buy a gun without a background check,” she said. In 2021, Tennessee was the 25th permitless carry state. So you could carry a gun in public without ever having a background check.”
The shooter who killed five 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 parents of the shooter, authorities haven’t found any issues or problems with the attacker’s past.
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.
In a scenario where an armed assailant attacks defenseless victims, Gutowski said, the kind of firearm they use “is, unfortunately, only likely to marginally change the outcome.”
“There’s no infrastructure for concerned people,” Clayton said. A system that the individuals parents could use to alert local authorities and get a petition from a judge to have guns taken from them is something a lot of people wish would have been available.
The teachers knew exactly what to do and where to place their children when a shooter fired multiple rounds in several classrooms, but didn’t hit any students.