The shooting in Nashville became the mass shooting in America this year
Another school massacre occurred in the USA. Police say the Nashville school mass shooter carefully planned the attack. As a result of the crime, three children and three adults died. Police killed the attacker, a 28-year-old former student. Meanwhile, US President Biden is repeating his call for meaningful gun control reform.
Armed with two assault-style weapons and a pistol, the former student (or student, as police say the entity identified itself as transgender) killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville. The massacre was carried out after carefully planning the attack, drawing up a detailed map and conducting surveillance of 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 shot and killed an attacker at a school attached to a Presbyterian church. «Covenant» in the capital of Tennessee.
Nashville police identified the dead children as Evelyn Dickhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all of them were nine years old. Also killed were substitute teacher Cynthia Peake, 61, Katherine Koons, 60, and custodian Mike Hill, 61.
The website of the school, a Presbyterian institution founded in 2001, lists one Catherine Koons as the head of the school. Her online LinkedIn profile says she has been running the school since July 2016.
“Shooting at the school where my dad, my uncle and my stepmom work, please pray right now,” local resident Megan Hill wrote on social media around noon local time. Six hours later, she posted an update: “I'm just in shock and disbelief. My heart is broken, I don’t understand why anyone would shoot up a school where precious children are.”
“My uncle died today in this shootout,” she wrote. “My mom’s brother, Lord, help me and my family, please pray for all my cousins.”
After lamenting the «heartbreaking» attack, Joe Biden repeated 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 tearing our communities apart,” the US president said at the White House. “This is tearing the soul out of this nation.”
Nashville Police Chief John Drake said, “I was literally moved to tears when I saw the children being led out of the building.”
In 2020 This year, firearms overtook car crashes as the leading cause of death among children and teenagers in the United States, The Guardian notes.
Rachel Dibble, who visited the church as families searched for their children, described the scene as leaving everyone in “total shock.”
“People couldn’t help but shake,” said Dibble, whose children attend another private school. school in Nashville. “The kids… started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some stupid eyelets on them, and now their whole lives changed today.”
Dr. Shamendar Talwar, a social psychologist from the UK 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 clergy who provided support to the families.
The shooter was Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, of Nashville. Police Chief Drake said Hale was/was a former student at the school. He also said that the killer identified himself as transgender.
Drake said the school could be entered 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're looking at.”
Hale “had no criminal history at all,” Drake said, adding that an automatic rifle and pistol were used in the attack, as well as a simple handgun. Drake said police believe the two guns were obtained legally.
Don Aaron, a police spokesman, said the first call about the shooting came in at 10:13 a.m. The shooter, Aaron said, “entered the bottom floor. Shots rang out throughout the floor before the shooter reached the upper level. And it was on the upper level where the shooter encountered police and was killed.”
According to Aaron, the shooting occurred in a “lobby type area” and “not in a classroom per se.” The shooter was dead by 10:27 a.m.
Drake said the school has a protocol in place in case of an assault. He said some children “evacuated to the wooded area” behind the school, while some went to the fire building. After the shooting, the 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, The Guardian emphasizes. Last May, 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. More recently, a 6-year-old child shot and killed his teacher in Virginia, and a high school student in Colorado shot and killed two administrators.
There have been at least 89 violent incidents reported in the U.S. this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. involving guns in daycare centers, schools or during school events.
The Nashville shooting was the 128th mass shooting in the U.S. 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.
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