6 dead as armed woman attacks Nashville school
Police: Assailant a former student who planned assault
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A female shooter wielding two “assault-style” rifles and a pistol killed three students and three adults at a private Christian school here Monday in the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country growing increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.
Police said they believe the 28-yearold female shooter was a former student at the Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001. She died after being shot by police.
The violence at the school — which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade — comes as communities around the nation are reeling from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last May, a first-grader who shot his teacher in Virginia and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.
“I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at an afternoon news conference.
Authorities said the shooter was from the Nashville area, but her name has not been released, and her motive in the attack has not been determined. Police said she had drawn a detailed map of the school, including potential entry points, and done surveillance before the shooting.
The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 years old, and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.
Covenant’s website lists Koonce as the head of the school.
President Joe Biden, speaking at an unrelated event at the White House on Monday, called the shooting a “family’s worst nightmare” and again implored Congress to pass a ban on cer
tain semi-automatic weapons.
“It’s ripping at the soul of this nation, ripping at the very soul of this nation,” Biden said.
The shooter’s identity as a woman surprised experts on mass shootings. Female shooters make up only about 5 percent to 8 percent of all mass shooters, said Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama who has closely studied the psychology and behavior of mass shooters.
Monday’s tragedy unfolded over roughly 14 minutes. Police received the initial call about an active shooter at 10:13 a.m.
Officers began clearing the first story of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, police spokesperson Don Aaron said during a news briefing.
Two officers from a five-member team opened fire in response, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 a.m., Aaron said. He said there were no police officers present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.
The Covenant School’s victims were pronounced dead at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital and at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Other students walked to safety Monday, holding hands as they left their school surrounded by police cars, to a nearby church to be reunited with their parents.
Rachel Dibble, who was at the church as families reunited there, described the scene as everyone being in “complete shock.”
“People were involuntarily trembling,” said Dibble, whose children attend a different private school in Nashville. “The children … started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some Froot Loops and now their whole lives changed today.”
Dr. Shamendar Talwar, a social psychologist from the United Kingdom who is working on an unrelated mental health project in Nashville, raced to the church as soon as he heard news of the shooting to offer help. He said he was one of several chaplains, psychologists, life coaches and clergy inside supporting the families.
“All you can show is that the human spirit, that basically that we are all here together … and hold their hand more than anything else,” he said.
Jozen Reodica heard the sirens from outside her office building nearby. As her building was placed under lockdown, she took out her phone and recorded the chaos.
“I thought I would just see this on TV,” she said. “And right now, it’s real.”
The Covenant School was founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, according to the school’s website. The school is in the affluent Green Hills neighborhood just south of downtown Nashville, situated close to the city’s top universities and home to the famed Bluebird Café — a beloved spot for musicians and songwriters.
The grade school has roughly 50 staff members. The school’s website features the motto “Shepherding Hearts, Empowering Minds, Celebrating Childhood.”
Top legislative leaders announced Monday that the Gopdominant Statehouse would meet briefly in the evening and delay taking up any legislation.
“In a tragic morning, Nashville joined the dreaded, long list of communities to experience a school shooting,” Mayor John Cooper wrote on Twitter.