The suspect, who killed three children and three adults at a Nashville elementary school, was caught on the school’s security cameras, footage released Monday by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
• Also read: A heavily armed young woman kills 3 children and 3 adults at a Nashville elementary school
We can see Audrey Hale shooting through the glass doors of The Covenant School to enter, assault weapon in hand.
Just before that, we see them arriving at the school parking lot, driving very close to a park crowded with children.
The shooter wears camo pants, a tactical jacket over a white t-shirt, a red cap and goggles.
She walks with a rather casual stride at first and walks around the square without being caught.
She does not meet anyone on the surveillance camera images that have been made public.
Flashes of light are visible and indicate that an alarm has been triggered.
The perpetrator of the bloodbath, a former student, killed three children and three adults.
She was quickly killed by officers who arrived at the scene.
She was identified by police as a 28-year-old transgender person named Audrey Hale.
The attacker, who was in possession of school entrance and exit maps and left a “manifesto” that was discovered at his home, was “prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake said.
Well prepared attack
In an interview with NBC News, the police chief added that the suspect was likely planning a major attack, and in his letter “explained that shootings would erupt in multiple locations, one of which was the school.”
The attacker entered a small Christian private school in the Tennessee capital, “The Covenant School,” in the middle of the morning, armed with two assault rifles and a pistol, and shot through a glass door.
He went to the first floor of this facility, which he had attended as a student, fired numerous shots, killing three children aged 8 to 9 and three adults aged 60 to 61.
The name of one of the victims, identified as Katherine Koonce, matches that of the principal.
Swiftly dispatched to the scene, officers shot him dead immediately and, according to police spokesman Don Aaron, he was pronounced dead fifteen minutes after the first call for help.
During the attack, one of the teachers managed to call her daughter. “She told me she hid in a closet and was shot everywhere,” Avery Myrick told local broadcaster WSMV4.
Concerned parents marched through a church all day to pick up the sheltered children.
On Monday evening, flowers were laid at a makeshift memorial outside the facility, where some people knelt in prayer.
Dislike of school?
The still-unknown motive could be linked to a “resentment” against that school, noted John Drake.
The school, founded by the local Presbyterian Church, is housed on its grounds, the New York Times reported. According to the US newspaper, one of the children killed was Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of church pastor Chadd Scruggs.
President Joe Biden expressed his dismay at the “heinous” crime and ordered the White House flags to be flown at half-mast.
Gun violence is “rending the soul of our nation,” he commented, again urging Congress to ban assault rifles.
The Democratic President has long advocated that the US legislature ban, or at least limit, the possession of these weapons, which are designed to cause as many victims as possible, but he is met with opposition from the opposition.
“I am devastated and heartbroken by the tragic news from Covenant School,” Republican Senator Bill Hagerty tweeted.
About 400 million firearms are in circulation in the United States, where they caused more than 45,000 deaths by suicide, accident or homicide in 2020, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
For the first time this year, guns became the leading cause of death among young people ages 1 to 19, with 4,368 deaths from car accidents and drug overdoses, according to the CDC.
Bloodbaths in schools are only a tiny part, but shape the minds more.
murders in schools
The United States was particularly shocked by the bloodbath that took place in 2012 at a school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut (20 children killed) and in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022 (19 children and two teachers).
Between those two tragedies, a 2018 massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida had sparked a major mobilization.
But Congress never passed significant reforms, which were fiercely opposed by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) lobby group.
Joe Biden’s calls to ban assault rifles are unlikely to be successful. A February ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 51% of Americans oppose it and only 47% support it.