[ad_1]
Police on the scene at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Photo: Uncredited/AP/Shutterstock
Three adults and three nine-year-olds were shot and killed in a shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday morning. The shooter, a 28-year-old woman who was apparently a former student of the school, was killed after police arrived on the scene. Below is what we know about this developing story.
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday, a shooter opened fire at the Covenant School, a private, Christian school serving children from pre-K through sixth grade with roughly 200 students enrolled and more than 30 faculty members. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said the shooter was a 28-year-old woman who entered the school through a side entrance armed with two assault-style rifles and a pistol. She shot at the victims in a lobby of the building on the second floor. Police later confronted her, and she was shot and killed.
Early Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for Vanderbilt University Medical Center confirmed that three children who were taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds had died. Soon thereafter, the hospital confirmed that three adults had been shot and killed in the attack as well. On Monday afternoon, Nashville police released the names and ages of the victims:
According to the authorities, the shooting took place quickly. The Nashville Fire Department stated that the first call for the incident was at 10:13 a.m., and police said that the suspect was killed before 10:30 a.m. Nashville police chief John Drake said that he believed all doors to the school had been locked.
A police investigation is still underway into the shooter and her motive, but Police Chief Drake told reporters on Monday that the woman, who has not been publicly identified, was “at one point a student” at the Covenant School. NBC News reports that three law enforcement officials briefed on the matter have identified her as Audrey Hale.
As the New York Times points out, mass shootings perpetrated solely by women are extremely rare. There are only four, dating back to the 1966, in the Violence Project’s database of mass shootings in the U.S.
Drake confirmed in a press conference all families of those who were killed have been notified, and parents have been instructed to meet at the nearby Woodmont Baptist Church to pick up their children.
In remarks following the shooting, President Joe Biden described the deaths of the children as a “family’s worst nightmare” and commended the officers who responded to the attack. “We have to do more to stop gun violence,” Biden said, urging Congress to pass his assault-weapons ban. “We have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”
This post has been updated.
[ad_2]
Source link
