“Something bad is going to happen. You’ll hear from me when I’m dead. This is a farewell message. See you in another life.” It’s the final message from Audrey Elizabeth Hale to a former basketball partner shortly before the shooting at the Nashville Christian school where she was a student and for whom she harbored a strong resentment. Hale’s attack on Covennat School was a premeditated attack: the 28-year-old girl carefully considered how she would move once she got to the scene. And he did this by drawing plans of the lot the school sits on and writing in his diary step by step how he wanted to behave. Detailed maps were found in his apartment along with some sort of manifesto and other documents that may hide the reasons for his crazy act. At the moment, police don’t know the reasons that led Hale to open fire at the elementary school, but he admitted that one of the leads investigated is precisely hatred of the institute. The girl – reported the Nashville police chief – identified as transgender and, according to some acquaintances, had recently told her parents.
The killer’s break-in to the school was caught by surveillance cameras
Neighbors described them as “cute,” “normal” people, if “maybe too quiet. Nothing would ever lead me to believe that she would be capable of such a gesture or that there are guns in her family,” said a neighbor. In fact, the girl’s mother, Norma Hale, is an anti-gun and gun activist and had repeatedly posted petitions on her Facebook page to ban high-capacity magazines and keep guns out of schools. The woman and her husband are working with police to investigate the incident and said their daughter is receiving medical treatment for “emotional disorders”. While the investigation continues, investigators have released six-minute footage of the shooting. Video, captured by an officer’s bodycam, shows oncoming police running to the second floor, where the shots came, yelling to stop Audrey – who was wearing a red beanie and camouflage pants – and then the shots that “they killed her”. “Suspect down,” are the last words of agents Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazzo to tell the rest of the team that the attacker was down. Additional footage shows the woman arriving at the school in a gray Hyundai and entering the building. The guns in his possession, three in all, had been obtained legally. And it is precisely over weapons that the political controversy is rekindled. President Joe Biden has again called for a ban on assault rifles, such as Audrey Hale’s AR-style rifle, which is generally the most common model used in American mass murders. The Democrats are pushing for stricter control rules. Republicans instead are riding aggressive anti-transgender rhetoric and attacking the liberal champions of the Lgbtq+ community. “With the growing number of transgender and non-binary people conducting mass shootings, instead of talking about guns, wouldn’t it be better to talk about these lunatics who are gender-affirming their children?” the ‘former’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted presidents. “How many hormones like testosterone did the Nashville killer take? Everyone should stop picking guns now. The woman who shot Nashville identified herself as a man. So are we still pointing the finger at white men? “, Marjorie Taylor Greene. But in the outraged Nashville community, the Christmas photo of Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents the city, jumps up and stirs up anger: a shot in which Ogles is immortalized with his wife and children, holding a gun and a decorated Christmas tree in the background hold
Nashville citizens commemorate the victims with stuffed animals and balloons
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