The former student of a Christian grade school in Nashville who went on a shooting spree and k!lled three 9-year-olds and three adults was being treated by a doctor for an “emotional disorder,” the city’s police chief said on Tuesday. He also had a collection of guns.
Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, was the person who started the shooting on Monday. Hours after police released a scary video of officers storming the Covenant School in the middle of the attack and searching every room before confronting and k!lling Hale, new information came out about her.
Authorities said that they were still trying to figure out why Hale did what he did as detectives looked over his notes and other evidence.
Hale had two assault-style weapons and a handgun. This is the latest in a long line of U.S. mass shootings that have turned schools into k!lling zones and fueled a national debate about gun rights and regulations.
Do you know that there was a shooting at a house party with more than 100 teenagers in Douglas County, Georgia? Two people were k!lled in the shooting, and six others were hurt:
Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters on Tuesday that Hale legally bought the three guns he used on Monday from five stores in the Nashville area. Hale had bought seven guns in the past few years.
Drake said that Hale’s own parents didn’t know he had more than one gun because they thought he only had one gun and then sold it. The chief also said that Hale’s parents thought he shouldn’t have had any weapons because of his mental health.
The mother had asked what was in the red bag when Hale left the house with it Monday morning, the chief said. Hale “was under care, a doctor’s care, for an emotional disorder,” the chief told reporters during a news briefing, without going into more detail.
Under Tennessee law, a person’s mental illness is not a reason for the police to take away their guns unless a court says they are mentally incompetent, “judicially committed” to a mental institution, or put under a conservatorship “by reason of mental defect.”
People can’t buy guns in Tennessee if a court or other legal authority says they are dangerous to themselves or others or can’t take care of themselves because of mental illness. But just being cared for by a doctor wouldn’t be enough to meet that threshold.
Drake said that it seemed like Hale had been trained in some way to use weapons. Hale sh0t at police officers as they drove up to the school in patrol cars from the second floor, staying away from large windows so he wouldn’t be an easy target.
Hale left behind a detailed map of the school that showed where people could get in, as well as what Drake called a “manifesto” that suggested Hale might have planned to shoot up other places.
On Monday, Drake said Hale identified as a transgender person and that investigators think the suspect had “some resentment” about having to go to the Covenant School as a child.
The chief wouldn’t say more and didn’t say if Hale’s gender identity, education, or other social or religious factors might have played a role. Investigators “don’t have a motive at this time,” he said on Tuesday.
The shooting happened a few weeks after Tennessee’s legislature put the state at the center of a political uproar over LGBTQ rights by voting to ban gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender children and put new limits on drag performances.
The suspect’s LinkedIn page showed that Hale preferred male pronouns. It listed recent jobs in graphic design and grocery delivery.
