The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Monday evening confirmed that the person who shot and killed six people on Monday morning at The Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville was 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who “identified as transgender.” Hale was killed on scene by police that morning.
“Our investigations tell us she was a former student, at the school,” said MNPD Chief John Drake in a press conference, adding that he did not know how long Hale attended the school.
“She does identify as transgender,” Drake said.
Drake also said that authorities are in possession of a “manifesto” and other documents – including a map of the school’s campus – left behind by the shooter, but did not disclose the contents of those documents.
He described the mass shooting as a “targeted attack.”
Drake told reporters that he could not confirm whether Hale first entered the church before entering the school, but that officers first responded to the church when they received the initial calls that shots had been fired.
“There was five officers that immediately went in and addressed [the shooting],” said Drake. “We have video that we’re going to release where you can see – in the video you can hear gunfire going on in the school where they addressed the threat and took that threat down.”
Drake confirmed that the weapons used in the shooting were an AR-15 style rife, an AR-15 style pistol, and a handgun. He said two of those weapons may have been obtained legally.
Three students, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all aged nine, were reportedly killed in the shooting.
Three adults associated with the school, Cynthia Peak, a substitute teacher, and Mike Hill, the janitor, both aged 61; and Katherine Koonce, the head of the school, aged 60, were also killed.
Watch the full press conference here:
Chief Drake did not identify the birth name or the birth gender of Audrey Elizabeth Hale.
The Daily Beast reported:
Hours after the shooting, police searched a home just three miles away from the school. A neighbor, Sandy Durham, who is also a family friend of the Hales, said the ATF told her they were there “to see what was going on next door [at the Hale house].”
“I do know Audrey, I’ve known her since she was a baby. I had just gotten out of the shower when all of this started happening. I didn’t really know anything more than that. Something was going on next door. It’s just tragic for everybody. The sweet children that were hurt, killed, the adults. All of it,” she told The Daily Beast.
Asked if there were any warning signs about Hale, Durham responded, “Never. She was very sweet. I don’t know what happened. It’s very scary.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “Covenant School” by Metro Nashville PD.
Absolutely no way to take away guns in a country where so many have access- and the government should not be allowed to. Make whatever you want about the 2nd amendment. We have to meet this situation where it is , and step up our defenses accordingly, and prosecute those who commit crimes. Public executions like the one released from metro p.d. , while terrible to see, are very likely effective deterrents. It has already been published that this killer picked a facility with lower security. No excuses to those who want to call us names and hurl insults at us who wish to have firearms. Just perseverance. We will not support gun control. We will continue to support the prosection of criminals. There is a thin line between criminal behavior and mental illness. Sometimes they are indistinguishable, or entwined to the point of inseparability, even by experts. There will never be a way to eliminate one – hundred percent of access to weapons for those who do inappropriate things with them- with inappropriate in itself becoming a quickly subjective term. Look what happened when governments took the “zero COVID” approach.
LBGTQ = mental illness.
trans = mental illness.
maybe trans people shouldn’t be allowed guns?
This is like something you would have read in the 1960s written by the KKK;
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trans-activists-called-for-day-of-vengeance-before-nashville-shooting
How ironic, or is it, that our government funded (our tax dollars) National Public Radio on Sunday past did an article about gender confused people buying firearms. While the usual leftist media rags never stops complaining about white, MAGA, Christian, fly over Americans owning firearms, NPR has no problem doing a puff piece about queers with guns. And look what happened yesterday! We all know how the MSM will spin this and use it to once again to call for the disarmament of law abiding Americans. And then we have that old fool in the white house who can’t even read a sentence correctly from a teleprompter who will no doubt use this tragedy to promote the banning of semi-automatic firearms. This heinous act by a completely deranged woman will be played to the hilt by the left, while at the same time totally disregarding her gender confusion. It now appears that this woman’s ideology classifies her as being a member of a hate group.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1159528541/meet-the-queer-people-who-practice-shooting-to-defend-themselves-from-hate-group
Now, the national media reports that the shooter was a psycho woman who identified as a ‘man.’ In this instance, as Hillary said, What difference does it make?
Sadly, what happened is that this person came under the spell of Satan and Democrats—a horrendous toxic combination of evil.
Prayers for all the children, their parents and the school.
Transgender liberal freak destroyed lives and families forever. What a sad day for liberal Nashville.