Law enforcement officials in Nashville, Tennessee have identified the three schoolchildren and three adults killed in a private Christian elementary school after a heavily armed 28-year-old opened fire on Monday morning.
Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all aged or nearly 9, were fatally shot. Hallie is reported to be the daughter of the church’s senior pastor, Chad Scruggs.
Katherine Koonce, age 60, and Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill, both age 61, were also among the six victims.
Koonce is listed on The Covenant School’s website as “head of school.”
Dr Kristy Mall, an educator, said on social media she attended graduate school with Koonce, calling the killing “senseless.”
“We HAVE to revamp how we handle mental illness in [Tennessee],” she wrote on Twitter on 27 March.
Hill was a school custodian, and Peak was a substitute teacher, according to law enforcement officials speaking to reporters on 27 March.
Families that were victims of other mass school killings offered their condolences to those affected by the Nashville shooting and demanded urgent reform to combat the proliferation of high-powered weapons used in some of the deadliest shootings in the US within the last decade.
“The latest school shooting will leave more victims and broken families. We cannot harden our way out of this,” Fred Guttenberg, whose child was killed in the Parkland shooting in Florida, wrote on Twitter on Monday.
“Tennessee, like Florida, is a state working overtime to weaken gun laws,” he added. “The facts are that we can either use legislation to make these shootings more predictable as is happening in Tennessee and Fl[orida], or we can use legislation to save lives. DO NOT LET THIS CONTINUE. PUSH THOSE WE ELECT TO SAVE LIVES.”
The suspected shooter was identified by Chief of Police John Drake as Audrey Hale, a former student at the school.
Law enforcement recovered a “manifesto” and “detailed” maps of the school, according to Chief Drake.
Armed with two assault-style firearms and a handgun, the suspected shooter entered the building through a side door and moved from the first floor to the second floor, firing “multiple shots,” according to police.
When they arrived on the second floor, a group of five officers saw the assailant firing. Two officers then shot and killed the suspect, according to police.
Police have identified the suspected shooter by their name at birth; Hale reportedly was a transgender man who used he/him pronouns, though law enforcement officials initially described the suspect as a woman in the aftermath of the shooting. Police did not provide another name but on the suspect’s social media accounts they refer to themselves as Aiden.
A neighbour of the Hale family said they were stunned the 28-year-old committed the shooting.
“This is a great family and it’s a tragedy,” they told NBC News.
Hale’s mother declined to speak at length about the shooting.
“It’s very difficult now, we ask for privacy,” she told ABC News. “I really can’t talk right now, I think I lost my daughter today.”
The small private school, connected to a Presbyterian church, enrolls roughly 200 students.
Tennessee officials say they are shocked by the violence, the fifth school shooting in the Nashville area since 2011 and the first since 2018, according to The Tennessean.
“I was literally moved to tears to see this as the kids were being ushered out of the building,” Chief Drake told reporters.
“Devastated and heartbroken about the tragic news at Covenant School. I’m grateful to law enforcement and first responders for their heroic actions,” Republican US senator for Tennessee Bill Hagerty said on Twitter. “I am monitoring the situation closely, and my office is in contact with local officials and available to anyone needing assistance.”
President Joe Biden also addressed the “heartbreaking” incident as he revived his demand for congressional lawmakers to renew a federal assault weapons ban that has lapsed for nearly 20 years.
“A family’s worst nightmare,” he said in remarks on Monday. “We have to do more to stop gun violence ... It’s ripping our communities apart. It’s ripping at the very soul of the nation. We have to do more to protect our schools so they aren’t turned into prisons.”
