A heavily armed former student shot through a locked school door before killing three children and three staff members at a private Christian campus in Nashville on Monday, authorities said.
In addition to the three 9-year-old students, the 28-year-old attacker fatally wounded a custodian, a substitute teacher and the head of school before being killed by responding officers, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said.
Audrey Hale had planned extensively for the violence at The Covenant School on Burton Hills Boulevard, police said.
“There were maps drawn of the school, in detail of surveillance, entry points,” Drake said.
The shooter, who was killed on the school’s second floor, had two “assault-type rifles and a handgun,” an official said.
The three students killed were Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, police tweeted.
Substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, school head Katherine Koonce, 60, and custodian Mike Hill, 61, were also killed, police said. Koonce is a Vanderbilt University graduate who had a doctorate in education, according to the school’s website.
Students of the school, which serves preschool students through sixth graders, were bused to Woodmont Baptist Church, 2 miles away, where they were reunited with their parents.
Police said that they first got calls about the shooter at 10:13 a.m. (11:13 a.m. ET) and that Nashville firefighters first reported their personnel were responding to an “active aggressor” at 10:39 a.m.
The police department response was swift,” police spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters.
The police department response was swift,” police spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters.
They heard shots coming from the second level. They immediately went to the gunfire. When the officers got to the second level, they saw a shooter, a female, who was firing. The officers engaged her. She was fatally shot by responding police officers.”
Five police officers came upon the shooter, and two opened fire, Aaron said.
“By 10:27 the shooter was deceased,” Aaron said.
One officer was hurt by shattered glass, officials said.
The Covenant School employs 33 teachers, with an 8-to-1 student-instructor ratio, according to its website. On a normal day of class, 209 students and 42 staff members would be on campus, Aaron said.
The school was founded in 2001 as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church and shares the same address as the church.
The fire department helped usher the children out of the school, carefully trying to keep them from seeing the carnage.
President Joe Biden called Monday’s attack “heartbreaking” and a “family’s worst nightmare.”
“We have to do more to stop gun violence,” he said. “It’s ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation — ripping at the very soul of the nation. And we — we have to do more to protect our schools so they aren’t turned into prisons.”