Nashville (AFP) - A heavily armed former student killed three young children and three staff in what appeared to be a carefully planned attack at a private elementary school in Nashville on Monday, before being shot dead by police.
Chief of Police John Drake named the suspect as Audrey Hale, 28, who the officer later said identified as transgender.
Hale left behind a manifesto, had maps of the school detailing surveillance and entry-exit points, and was "prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement," the police chief told reporters following the latest outburst of gun violence to stun the United States.
In an interview with NBC News, he said the suspect was likely plotting a broader attack, as the manifesto "indicates that there was going to be shootings at multiple locations, and the school was one of them."
Armed with at least two assault rifles and a handgun, Hale entered The Covenant School, a Christian academy, from a side entrance, allegedly shooting through a door -- firing multiple shots while advancing through the building, according to police.
Police identified the six victims, saying one of the three children was eight years old and two were age nine, while the adults killed were age 60 to 61.
One of the victims, Katherine Koonce, is listed as head of the school on the academy's website.
There was confusion surrounding the suspect's gender identity, with officials using "she" and "her" to refer to them, while a LinkedIn profile appeared to identify Hale as a man.
Police said officers were on the scene within about 15 minutes of receiving the first emergency call around 10:00 am (1500 GMT), engaging the shooter, who returned fire before being shot dead.
Television images showed children holding hands as they left the school, and one searing photograph showed a child sobbing through the window of her yellow school bus as it pulled away from the crime scene.
Avery Myrick said her mother, a pre-kindergarten teacher at Covenant, hid as shots rang out through the school.
"She said she was hiding in the closet, and that there was shooting all over and that they had potentially tried to get into her room, and just that she loved us," Myrick told WSMV4 television, an NBC local affiliate.
When she heard her mother was safe it brought "a ton of relief."
"But you know, you're still hurting for the people out there who might not get that call," she said.
School shootings are alarmingly common in the United States, where the proliferation of firearms has soared in recent years.
President Joe Biden described the latest shooting as "sick" and said gun violence was tearing the nation's "soul," as he urged Congress to pass a ban on the assault weapons often used in mass shootings.
"It's ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation," he said.
A Nashville fire department spokesperson, Kendra Loney, said all unharmed students were escorted out of the building with faculty and staff.
An American epidemic
The Covenant School is a private Presbyterian institution with just over 200 students in preschool to roughly age 12.
Drake said investigators were working on a possible motive but said it was "not confirmed."
Asked whether Hale's gender identity may have been a factor, Drake said: "There is some theory to that, we're investigating all the leads."
He also told NBC that investigators had learned Hale might have had "some resentment to having to go to that school -- I don't have all the details of that just yet -- and that's why this incident occurred."
There have been 129 mass shootings -- defined as incidents in which four or more people were shot or killed -- so far this year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
Biden's calls for Congress to reinstate the national ban on assault rifles, which existed from 1994 to 2004, has run up against opposition from Republicans, who are staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms and have had a narrow majority in the House of Representatives since January.
Just hours after the shooting, pro-firearm organization Gun Owners of America assailed Biden as "the man responsible for making schools soft targets," and repeated their call to allow teachers to arm themselves in classrooms.
"When will we start to have conversations about real solutions for hardening schools & protecting kids?Armed teachers are a 100% effective deterrent!" the group tweeted.
The deadlock in Washington has come despite public uproar over high-profile massacres such as the one at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012, when 26 people, including 20 children, were killed.
The 2018 murder of 14 students and three staff members in Parkland, Florida fueled a nationwide movement, led by young people, to demand stricter gun controls -- but failed to spur significant action in Congress.
