News and commentary from Tennessee in the wake of Monday’s school shooting

[Editor’s note: In the wake of yesterday’s tragedy in Nashville, Tennessee, we are publishing the following news update and commentary from our sibling States Newsroom outlet, the Tennessee Lookout.] 

Updates on Nashville school shooting: police investigation continues as city mourns

By the Tennessee Lookout staff

A day after an armed shooter stalked the hallways of The Covenant School in Nashville, killing three children and three adults, the law enforcement investigation continues.

Among the victims were three nine-year-old children: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults were Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher; Mike Hill, age 61, a custodian; and Covenant Head of Schools Katherine Koonce, 60.

The shooter was identified as a former student Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, killed by two Metro Nashville Police Officers who responded to the scene. Hale was armed with at least two assault rifles and a handgun, police said.

People gathered Monday night in vigils across the city to mourn the tragic losses; President Joe Biden ordered U.S. flags at half staff until sunset on Friday and the Metro Nashville Police Department began releasing new details of the events last Monday. There are more public gatherings planned for today. The Legislature reconvenes and law enforcement are expected release further details.

Monday marks Nashville’s third mass shooting in six years

The violence wrought Monday inside an elementary school is Nashville’s third mass shooting in six years.

In 2018, four people were killed when an armed gunman entered a south Nashville Waffle House restaurant in the early hours of a Sunday morning.

The victims were Joe Perez Jr., Taurean Sanderlin, Akilah Dasilva and DeEbony Groves.

Travis Reinking, the shooter, was sentenced to life in prison for the murders last year.

In 2017, an armed gunman opened fire at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Nashville, killing one person and injuring six others who had gathered their for Sunday services.

The shooter, Emanuel Kidega Samson, was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.

On Monday, the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ posted a message of sorrow on Facebook.

Police release surveillance video

Police on Monday night released a portion of school surveillance video showing Hale driving a Honda Fit through the school’s parking, past a playground of children on swing sets, before parking, shooting down a double door into the schools and roaming empty hallways.

Police reported that Hall fired through a window at arriving police officers. Two members of an officer team fired on Hale in a second floor common area. Those officers were identified as Officer Rex Englebert, a 4-year Metro Nashville Police Department veteran, and Officer Michael Collazo, a 9-year-veteran.

Police said they have also found writings from Hale, including a manifesto and detailed maps of the building housing the school, in searches of a home and car connected to Hale.

Hale fired a number of rounds inside the Covenant Church/School building. She was armed with these 3 guns and significant ammunition. pic.twitter.com/3LYOU2r0sh

— Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) March 28, 2023

‘Our community is heartbroken’

Late Monday, the school also released a statement expressing heartbreak and asking for privacy.

Report: Shooter texted friend shortly before shooting

Channel 5 also reported late on Monday that the shooter had texted a former basketball teammate in the minutes before the shooting.

At 9:57 a.m., a former middle school basketball teammate of Audrey Hale looked at her phone to find a message from The Covenant School shooter on Instagram. https://t.co/JbJET68hj0

— NewsChannel 5 (@NC5) March 28, 2023

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Commentary: A grim theory on how we get gun safety laws 

by Mark Harmon 

Nashville-based writers on this site already have written movingly about the tragic gun crime at Covenant School, yet another school shooting — this one took the lives of three children and three adults.

Let me add this perspective from only a modest distance away, my adopted home of Knoxville is less than a 3-hour drive east of Nashville.

You see, I am a survivor of a hate crime involving blasts of gunfire. My church, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist, was having a special service on July 27, 2008; it was a children’s play, a condensed version of Annie. A gunman came into our sanctuary early in the play, took out a modified shotgun hidden in a guitar case and blasted away. My friend and an usher that day, Greg McKendry, tried to stop that gunman.  Greg’s burly body took some of the blast, saving many lives — likely including my own.

I had reflexively dived under a pew by the time of the second blast. Several in my congregation, including John Bohstedt (dressed as Daddy Warbucks for the play) and another friend Jamie Parkey, tackled the gunman.  Greg bled out on the floor of the church he loved. A visitor, Linda Kraeger, there for the play also died, and six were wounded.  My wife, in an office at the time, was the first to call 911.  The gunman said he had targeted us to kill liberals, and he had brought 76 shells of #4 shot, ammunition for a bloodbath.

I recall this story to explain a grim theory I have about how and when we finally will get effective and meaningful gun safety legislation in our state and our country. Dozens of dead children in Aurora, Uvalde, Parkland, and Newtown did not move our radical right legislators.  After this Nashville shooting, several predictably barfed some vacuous variation on “thoughts and prayers.”  We will not have serious gun safety laws until those gun-fetishist legislators lose elections to brave challengers willing to defy convention and run loud and aggressive campaigns pointing out the blood on the incumbents’ hands.

The political coalition to do this is being built by groups like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Everytown for Gun Safety.  Their ranks grow daily not only by political persuasion, but also by tragic personal experience.  The Gun Violence Archive numbers from 2022 help explain.  That year alone 44,333 people overall died from gun violence, more than 20,000 from homicides, murders, (including 646 mass shootings) and accidents, and more than 24,000 from suicides. The number of injuries tallied 38,588 nationwide.

Now let’s assume those dead and injured leave each have six friends and relatives who reconsider any past hesitation on gun safety laws based on the hard realities of what has happened to people they know. That would mean every year of gun carnage in America leads to roughly half a million more people who have had enough of inaction, deflection, and denial. The gun extremists, by excusing the piles of dead and injured neighbors, are building the coalition that eventually will defeat their putrid cause.

The Gun Violence Archive numbers also give us strong clues about the kinds of legislation that must be passed.  Let’s start with laws to prohibit gun sales to spouse abusers. Let’s also allow the clinically depressed to put themselves on a no-purchase list so when deep despair strikes they will not succumb to the fleeting but strong desired to kill themselves. We can pass stronger laws requiring gun locks, licensing, background checks, training , and safe storage — and require insurance for all gun owners just as we require insurance for car drivers (and with stiff economic penalties and legal liability for those who fail any of those safety steps). Of course, we also must return to the days when we banned assault weapons from sale, and provably reduced deaths from those weapons.

Different steps will be needed to deal with the hate and mental illness lingering behind America’s tragic gun death tallies, but failure to solve all the deaths cannot be used as an excuse to take steps that will avoid many of the deaths and injuries.  We stand far ahead of other nations in gun deaths, and have more guns than people.  It’s time to elevate the people over the guns in our plans for our future together.

Mark D. Harmon is a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee.