Hundreds of other people collected at a candlelight vigil in Nashville on Wednesday night time to mourn and honor the six sufferers of a mass shooting at an basic school.
Local, state and federal officers at the side of dignitaries, non secular leaders and neighborhood figureheads attended the somber rite at One Square Park in the downtown phase of Tennessee’s capital town. First girl Jill Biden and singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow have been amongst the ones in attendance, although Biden didn’t cope with the group.
Various audio system took turns studying aloud the names of the sufferers and expressing condolences to the grieving households.
“Just two days ago was our city’s worst day,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper advised the group. “I so wish we weren’t here, but we need to be here.”
A shooter gunned down 3 youngsters and 3 adults on the Covenant School in Nashville on Monday morning. Responding officials shot and killed the suspect about 14 mins after the preliminary 911 name got here in, in step with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
Police have known the slain youngsters as 9-year-old scholars Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs. The grownup sufferers have been known as 61-year-old custodian Mike Hill, 60-year-old head of school Katherine Koonce and 61-year-old change trainer Cynthia Peak.
During Wednesday’s vigil, native school administrator Tricia Drake stated she could not prevent desirous about her final dialog with Koonce, who she stated had prompt her on easiest get ready for an energetic shooter state of affairs.
“My last conversation with her, in August, was about who she used for her active shooter training because I know that she would have researched somebody,” Drake tearfully advised ABC News. “We ended up using the same active shooter training at the school where I was also a head. I can’t believe that was my last conversation with her.”
Drake stated she knew Koonce had made her mark when she noticed the photos that police launched from two of the responding officials’ body-worn cameras. One of the movies displays a Covenant School workforce member assembly Officer Rex Engelbert on the school’s major front, telling him: “The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.” She then is observed the usage of a key to liberate the door so officials may move within.
“Students were in their classrooms, locked up, the professional outdoors to lead the Metro policeman. She had a key, what her headcount was, she knew exactly where the students would be, she was prepared,” Drake advised ABC News. “I’m sure they had run those drills, and it’s because of Katherine and the foresight she had to make sure her staffers were prepared.”
Drake, who declined to mention the identify of the school she works for, stated she underwent the similar energetic shooter coaching that Koonce used and that the secret is to undertake a “warrior mentality,” accepting damage slightly than dying. Part of the educational, she stated, is to throw scholars out of home windows and run away so far as conceivable. Drake stated she believes Koonce’s preparation stored lives on Monday.
Drake recalled the instant she learned one thing could be critically improper when news concerning the shooting on the Covenant School started to unfold.
“I texted my sister and friends of mine to say: That’s Katherine’s school. I know she’s going to come out. She’s going to come out anytime now and tell everybody that it’s under control, that everything’s ok,” Drake recounted. “And I waited like everyone else for Katherine to come out and I thought it was so strange that she was not visible. She was so professional, so prepared, so committed to her faculty and those sweet children of hers, and it’s just such a loss. It is unthinkable that this has happened in our little town.”
The suspect — known as Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville — was once a former scholar of the Covenant School, in step with police. Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake advised journalists on Tuesday that it seems that the school was once most probably focused, however “students were randomly targeted.”
The police leader had advised journalists on Monday that Hale was once feminine and known as transgender however did not right away supply extra main points. A police spokesperson later advised ABC News that the suspect was once assigned feminine at delivery however pointed to a social media account connected to Hale that incorporated using the pronouns he/him.
The suspect was once armed with two assault-style rifles, a handgun and “significant ammunition” on the time of the assault, in step with police. Investigators have since searched Hale’s house in Nashville, the place they seized “a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence,” police stated in a press free up on Monday.
The police leader stated the suspect had legally bought seven weapons from 5 other native shops and concealed a few of the ones guns at house. Hale was once underneath a “doctor’s care for an emotional disorder,” the police leader stated, and Hale’s folks “were under the impression that was when she sold the one weapon” they believed Hale owned.
Hale additionally had an in depth map of the school in addition to “writings and a book we consider to be like a manifesto,” the police leader advised ABC News in an interview Tuesday on “Good Morning America.”
“We have not been able to determine a motive as of yet,” he added. “The investigation is very much still ongoing.”
Video from the school’s surveillance cameras displays the suspect arriving in a car and parking in the parking zone at 9:54 a.m. ET. Minutes later, the suspect is observed shooting via a door at the facet of the school and getting into the construction. Hale allegedly went from the primary surface to the second one surface, firing more than one photographs, in step with police.
Police gained a 911 name about an energetic shooter on the school at 10:13 a.m. ET. As officials answered to the scene, the suspect fired on police automobiles from a second-floor window, police stated.
Video from two of the responding officials’ body-worn cameras displays them getting into the school, following the sound of gunfire to the second one surface and discovering the suspect in a foyer house close to a window. After an officer shouts “reloading,” officials Rex Engelbert, a four-year veteran, and Michael Collazo, a nine-year veteran, each hearth on the suspect.
The Covenant School, a personal Christian school for kids in preschool via 6th grade, has about 209 scholars and 40 to 50 workforce individuals. It does no longer have a school useful resource officer, in step with police.
In a observation launched Monday night time, the Covenant School stated its neighborhood “is heartbroken.”
“We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our church and school,” the school stated. “We are focused on loving our students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing.”
ABC News’ Libby Cathey, Vera Drymon, Alex Faul, Matt Foster, Ben Gittleson, James Hill, Doug Lantz, Molly Nagle, Olivia Osteen, Darren Reynolds, John Santucci and Emily Shapiro contributed to this record.
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