Nashville, Tennessee.– A woman armed with two “assault-style” rifles and a handgun killed three 9-year-old students and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville Monday in the latest in a series of mass shootings in an increasingly nervous country. for bloodshed in educational institutions.
The suspect, who was shot dead by police, is believed to be a former student at The Covenant School in Nashville, where the shooting took place.
The woman reportedly drew a detailed map of the school, including potential entry points, and conducted surveillance before the attack.
The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 years old, and the adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
The website for The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists Katherine Koonce as the school’s principal. Her LinkedIn profile says she has run the school since July 2016. Peak was a substitute teacher and Hill was a janitor, according to investigators.
unclear information
Police gave unclear information about the shooter’s gender. For hours, the shooter was identified as a 28-year-old woman named Audrey Hale. Then, at a late-afternoon press conference, Police Chief John Drake said Hale was transgender. After the news conference, police spokesman Don Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale was currently identified.
Drake did not give a specific motive when asked by reporters, but gave chilling examples of the shooter’s pre-planning.
“We have a manifesto and some writings that we are reviewing that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he said. “We have a drawn map of how all this was going to happen.”
The Covenant School was founded as a ministry of the Covenant Presbyterian Church. The affluent Green Hills neighborhood, just south of downtown Nashville, where the Covenant School is located, is home to the famed Bluebird Café, a beloved hangout for musicians and songwriters.
President Joe Biden, speaking at an unrelated White House event on Monday, called the shooting “the family’s worst nightmare” and again implored Congress to pass a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons.
female shooters
The identity of the suspect as a woman surprised experts in mass attacks. Female shooters make up only 5% to 8% of all mass shooters, said Adam Lankford, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama who has closely studied the psychology and behavior of mass shooters.
There have been seven mass murders in schools in the United States since 2006, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in association with Northeastern University. In all of them, the shooters were men who killed four or more people in a 24-hour period at the K-12 school.
Researchers believe there are three main explanations for why men commit more shootings than women, according to Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University who has studied mass shootings for more than a decade.
Metzl listed those explanations as: men have more testosterone, are socialized to engage in violence, and own more guns than women.
The facts
The tragedy unfolded for about 14 minutes. Police received the initial call about an active shooter at 10:13 am.
Officers began clearing the first floor of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, police spokesman Don Aaron said during a news conference.
Two officers from a five-member team opened fire in response, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 am, Aaron said. One officer had a hand injury from a cut glass.
Aaron said there were no officers present or assigned at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.
Other students walked to safety, holding hands as they left their school surrounded by police cars to a nearby church to meet their parents.
balance of the massacre
Minors:
• Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9 years old
• Hallie Scruggs, 9 years old
• William Kinney, 9 years old
Adults:
• Cynthia Peak, 61 years old
• Katherine Koonce, 60 years old
• Mike Hill, 61 years old
