Woman enters through side door, shoots and kills 6 at Nashville private elementary school
A 28-year-old Nashville woman entered an elementary school through a side door Monday morning and began shooting staff and students inside, killing three adults and three students before police closed in and killed the assailant, authorities say.
Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said in a news briefing broadcast live by WKRN that police received a call of an active shooter inside The Covenant School at 10:13 a.m.
The child victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 years old. The adult victims were Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61, Nashville police said, adding that Koonce was the head of the school.
A team of five tactical officers entered the first story of the school and began clearing rooms when they heard gunshots coming from the second floor. Aaron says the officers immediately headed toward the gunfire, confronted the female shooter and fatally shot her at 10:27 a.m.
Police say the suspect, whose identification is pending, was armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun. Aaron says the woman entered through a side entrance of the building, which houses both a church and the school, and “traversed her way from the first to second floor, firing multiple shots.”
Aaron says it was unclear early this afternoon if any of the staff members confronted the suspect, who was killed in a lobby area of the second floor and not in a classroom. Police did not specify exactly where the victims were found.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake did not give a specific motive when asked by reporters Monday afternoon, but gave chilling examples of the shooter’s prior planning for the targeted attack, The Associated Press reported. “We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he said to reporters. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
On a typical day there are 209 students at the school and 40-50 staff members at the building. “We are reviewing video from the school to learn how exactly all of this happened,” Aaron says.
Two buses carried more than 100 students and adults to a reunification area away from the school. Three children and two adults were taken to a local hospital but did not survive, the Nashville Fire Department said. One officer suffered a hand injury due to breaking glass but there were no other injuries to first responders, Aaron says.
