The Nashville shooting was the mass shooting in America this year
Another school massacre has taken place in the US. Police say the shooter who carried out the mass shooting at a Nashville school carefully planned the attack. As a result of the atrocity, three children and three adults were killed. Police killed the attacker, a 28-year-old former student. Meanwhile, US President Biden reiterates his call for meaningful gun control reform.
Armed with two «assault-type» weapons and a pistol, a former student (or student, as the creature identified as transgender, according to police) killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville. The massacre was carried out after careful planning of the attack, drawing up a detailed map and monitoring the building, police said.
According to The Guardian, the shooting at the Covenant school in Nashville was the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country that is increasingly nervous about bloodshed in schools.
Police officers shot the attacker at a school attached to a Presbyterian church The Covenant in the capital of Tennessee.
Nashville police have identified the dead children as Evelyn Dickhouse, Halle Scruggs and William Kinney, all nine years old. Also killed were substitute teacher Cynthia Pick, 61, Catherine Koons, 60, and caretaker Mike Hill, 61.
The website of the school, a Presbyterian institution founded in 2001, lists one Katherine Koons as head of the school. Her online LinkedIn profile states that she has been running the school since July 2016.
“Shooting at the school where my dad, my uncle and my stepmother work, please pray right now,” local resident Megan Hill posted on social media around noon local time. Six hours later, she posted an update: «I'm just shocked and in disbelief. My heart is broken, I don't understand why anyone would need to shoot up a school with precious children.»
«My uncle died today in that shootout,» she wrote. “My mother’s brother, Lord, help me and my family, please pray for all my cousins.”
After lamenting the «heartbreaking» attack, Joe Biden reiterated his call for Congress to pass meaningful gun control reform, including a ban on assault weapons. “We must do more to stop the gun violence that is tearing our communities apart,” the US president said at the White House. “It rips the soul out of this nation.”
Nashville Police Chief John Drake said: “I was literally moved to tears seeing the children being taken out of the building.”
In 2020 firearms overtook car crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States, The Guardian notes.
Rachel Dibble, who visited the church as families searched for their children, described the scene in a way that left everyone in «total shock».
school in Nashville. “Kids…started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some stupid buttonholes, and now their whole life has changed today.”
Dr. Shamendar Talwar, a UK-based social psychologist who works on a mental health project in Nashville, rushed to the church as soon as he heard the news of the shooting to offer help. He said he was one of several chaplains, psychologists, life coaches and clergymen who provided support to families.
The shooter's name was Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, she lived in Nashville. Police Chief Drake revealed that Hale was/was a former student at that school. He also said that the killer identified himself as transgender.
According to Drake, the way to get into the school was by shooting through the door, adding that maps of the school were drawn, including entry points, and he said, “We have a manifesto, some records that we are looking at.”
Hale «didn't have a criminal record at all,» Drake said, adding that an automatic rifle and pistol were used in the attack, as well as a simple handgun. According to Drake, the police believe that the two guns were legally obtained.
Don Aaron, a police spokesman, said the first call about the shooting came at 10:13 am. The shooter, according to Aaron, “entered the lower floor. Shots rang out all over the floor before the shooter moved up to the upper level. And it was on the upper level where the shooter ran into the police and was killed.”
According to Aaron, the shooting took place in a “lobby type area” and “not in the classroom itself”. The shooter was dead by 10.27 am.
Drake said that the school has a protocol in place in case of an attack. He said some children «evacuated to the forest belt» behind the school, while some went to the firehouse. After the shooting, children were seen walking hand in hand and surrounded by police cars to the nearby Woodmont Baptist Church to reunite with their parents.
The shooting was only the latest such horrific event in the United States, emphasizes The Guardian. Last May, 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalda, Texas. Most recently, a six-year-old child shot and killed his teacher in Virginia, and a high school student in Colorado shot and killed two administrators.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, at least 89 incidents of violence have been reported in the US this year using firearms in kindergartens, schools, or during school events.
The Nashville shooting was the 128th mass shooting in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are injured or killed, not counting the attacker.