Mass shooter Audrey Hale (Photo: LinkedIn)/Covenant School security camera video footage (screenshot)
Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old who killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville, had been seeking treatment for an emotional disorder. Hale legally bought seven firearms, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said.
Bodycam footage of the Tennessee mass shooter being neutralized by police has been released.
Hale’s parents of the shooter said they knew Hale had bought and sold one weapon. Hale purchased the weapons between October 20, 2020, and June 6, 2022, police spokesman Don Aaron said.
On March 27, Hale left home with three of the weapons stashed in a bag. The weapons were an AR-15, a Kel-Tec SUB 2000, and a handgun – were found at the school.
Hale’s motives for the shooting are still unknown.
Victims included three 9-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of lead church pastor Chad Scruggs. Also killed were Cynthia Peak, 61, believed to be a substitute teacher; Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of the school; and Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian, police said.
The Covenant School is a private Christian school of about 200 students from Pre-K through 6th grade. The school is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, according to its website.
The footage is from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, who police said fatally shot the attacker, CNN reported
A search warrant executed at Hale’s home led to the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun, and other evidence, according to police.
Hale was transgender and used male pronouns on a social media profile.
Hale graduated from Nashville’s Nossi College of Art & Design in 2022 and worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper, a LinkedIn profile says.
After news of the mass shooting, Fox News star Tucker Carlson claimed that transgender people are the “natural enemy” of Christianity, RadarOnline.com reported.
“In Christianity, the price of admission is admitting that you’re not God,” Carlson explained during Tucker Carlson Tonight on March 28. “The trans movement takes the opposite view.”
“Trans ideology claims dominion over nature itself,” he continued. “That unwillingness to agree, that failure to acknowledge a trans person’s dominion over nature insights and outrages some in the trans community.”
He added, “People who believe they’re God can’t stand to be reminded that they are not. So, Christianity and transgender orthodoxy are wholly incompatible theologies, They can never be reconciled.”
He concluded, “They are on a collision course with each other. One side is likely to draw blood before the other side.”
But freelance journalist Katelyn Burns, who was the first openly trans Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history, said the problem is not trans people but guns.
In an opinion piece for San Francisco Chronicle, Burns wrote, “It’s crucial that trans allies see through the GOP rhetoric on all of this.”
Burns added, “School shootings are always tragic events, but this country decided a long time ago that these things are acceptable so long as the free flow of guns remains unhindered.”
The podcast host pointed out that most mass murders are not committed by trans people. “There were 646 mass shootings last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There will already be more than 100 in 2023. With their constant pushback against even the slightest restrictions on gun rights over the past few decades, Republicans have all but ensured that statistically speaking, sooner or later, the perpetrator of a deadly mass shooting would be trans,” Burns wrote.
Mass shooter Audrey Hale (Photo: LinkedIn)/Covenant School security camera video footage (screenshot)
