Seven dead in 'targeted attack' at US primary school, gunman (28) had multiple targets in mind

UpdateA shooting took place at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday. Three children (all 9 years old) and three adults were killed. The shooter, a 28-year-old woman, was killed by officers. Her name is Audrey Hale and she carried out a targeted attack, police said.

Foreign editors

Mar 28 2023

Latest update:
02:53

During a search of her home in Nashville, police found maps and drawings of the school building. The police also found a manifesto and another letter from the woman. This shows that the shooter had several places in mind as a target, the police say. The document “shows that there would be a mass shooting at several locations, and the school was one of them,” John Drake, the chief of the Nashville Police Department, said.

The shooting was reported to police at 10:13 a.m. local time on Monday morning. When officers arrived at Nashville’s Covenant School, a private Christian school, they heard gunfire on the first floor of the school complex, police spokesman Don Aaron told a news conference. The shooter, a former student of the school, was shot dead by officers around 10:27 am. She was carrying two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun. Hale obtained two of the guns legally. She gained entry to the school building by shooting through a door.

^{Text continues below the photo.}

A child cries on a speeding school bus outside the Nashville school. © AP

Children

The three affected children (all aged 9) were pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital, a spokesman for the local Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. He added that no other victims of the shooting are under treatment.

The three adults who died were all employed at the school. They are Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill (both 61 years old), and school principal Katherine Koonce (60).

^{Text continues below the photo.}

Officers and teachers lead children away from the Nashville school. © AP

‘Our city supports you’

Video images on Twitter show how several ambulances rush towards the school around 10.15 am. The area has been closed off by the police. The students’ parents later gathered at a nearby church and were reunited with their children.

At the school, founded in 2001, about two hundred children of primary school age are taught. About forty adults work there. City Mayor John Cooper has expressed his condolences to the families of the victims. “One tragic morning, Nashville joined the dreaded, long list of communities experiencing a school shooting,” he wrote on Twitter. “My heart goes out to the families of the victims. Our whole city supports you.”

^{Text continues below the photo.}

The children of the Nashville school are taken away on school buses to be reunited with their parents. © Getty Images via AFP

US President Joe Biden has called on Congress to act against gun violence in response to the deadly shooting, ‘because enough is enough’. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre: How many more children have to be killed before Republicans in Congress take action to break the ban on assault weapons, close loopholes in our background check system or demand the safe storage of guns ?”

^{Text continues below the tweet.}

Very unusual

Mass shootings are unfortunately more common in the United States. However, the fact that the shooter is a woman is very unusual. In only 4 of the 191 mass shootings since 1966 tracked by nonprofit research center The Violence Project, the perpetrator was a woman.

In 2023, the K-12 School Shooting Database has already recorded 89 school shootings in America. Last year there were a total of 303, the highest number in a year since 1970.