Three 9-year-old children and three adults are dead after a 28-year-old woman pretending to be a man opened fire in a small, private Christian grade school in Nashville on Monday.
Armed with two AR-style firearms and a handgun, reported former Covenant School student Audrey Hale entered the building where close to 200 students attend class by shooting through a set of glass doors.
Hale was reportedly “firing multiple shots” through the halls housing preschool through sixth-grade students and staff as well as at police vehicles from the second floor when two of the five police officers who immediately responded to the scene fatally shot her 14 minutes after an active shooter alarm was raised.
“The minute the calls came in, we responded to the church, to the school,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at a press conference on Monday.
Drake said Hale had no known criminal history before the shooting but did pen a “manifesto” and writings that “pertain to this day for the actual incident” that confirmed this was a “targeted attack.” Police also recovered a map from Hale’s vehicle in the Covenant School parking lot that laid out “how this was all going to take place.”
VIDEO: Nashville police chief confirms Audrey Hale identifies as transgender, suggests her trans identify motivated the killings: “We have a manifesto … and a map of how all of this was going to play out.” pic.twitter.com/Mss0FPqnUn
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 27, 2023
Police said the suspect’s writings revealed she planned to hit another location but was deterred by “too much security.”
Hale’s rampage occurred weeks after the Tennesee legislature voted to ban chemical castration or mutilation of children and mere days ahead of a “Day of Vengeance” hosted by transgender activists scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., and online beginning on March 31.
The event was designed to push back against legislation in several Republican states that bans transgender surgery and other hormonal interventions for minors.
“Like the Stonewall Riots the gays and lesbians were experiencing what the trans community is facing now. This cycle of hate needs to end in fact it must. Allies, siblings we need you now more than ever,” the website states.
The website includes a quote from LGBT radical Sylvia Rivera, who praised the violence that occurred during the Stonewall Riot in 1969.
**Source: Transgender Shooter Kills Six At Nashville Christian School