Nashville school shooter wrote manifesto and drew maps, according to police
The heavily armed man killed during a deadly shooting at a Nashville school left behind a manifesto and a map outlining his intentions, police said.
Scott L. Hall, USA TODAY
CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story omitted some of USA TODAY's mass killing database partners, The Associated Press and Northeastern University
The aftermath of the mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, that left three 9-year-olds and three school staff dead Monday, has renewed the debate about why shooters target schools.
There's no simple answer, but because schools can have limited security and youth deaths attract significant attention, they can be attractive targets for attackers, experts told USA TODAY.
Why do school shootings happen?
Robin M. Kowalski, professor of psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina, recently studied K-12 school and college shootings and other mass killings. She and her colleagues found the majority of people who attack K-12 schools are white, male, have average age 15, feel marginalized or bullied and use the events to take their own lives.
And they tend to come from within the school community, he said.
Attacks at K-12 schools are “night and day” from college shootings, which are more likely to occur after interpersonal conflicts, Kowalski said. People attacking K-12 schools are more likely to have a history of psychological problems, long-term or acute rejection experiences such as a recent breakup, or a fascination with death, guns and violence — including a fascination with school shootings, he said.
“The people behind the Sandy Hook and Columbine shootings, among others, were diagnosed with a variety of psychological conditions,” Kowalski said. wrote for the Brookings Institution.
Because most school shootings are “lone wolf attacks,” an act committed by one individual, one must understand the perpetrator's mindset, including his or her background, grievances, and mental health status, to truly understand motivation. of, Javed Ali said. former top FBI and Department of Homeland Security official and associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
“Each shooter seems to be driven by different factors,” he said.
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Did the Nashville shooter have a motive?
Authorities have yet to determine a clear motive for the shooting rampage in Nashville. Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said officers found “writings” and a detailed map of the school left behind by suspect Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, who revealed plans to target the school. The suspect entered the school with an AR-style rifle, an AR-style pistol and another handgun, police said.
The shooter previously attended The Covenant School and Drake he told NBC News that Hale might have “some resentment at having to go to that school.” Drake also said the suspect was being treated for an emotional disorder and had legally purchased seven firearms.
Police said the suspect initially planned to target another school in Nashville, but worried it would be more difficult because of a higher level of security.
The victims are 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs and Mike Hill, 61, school principal Katherine Koonce, 60, and Cynthia Peak, 61.
“In Nashville, we know the person went to school, so the question is, 'What drew them back to that school decades or so later?' Ali said. “We will never know the answer because this person is dead.”
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How many mass shootings occurred in 2023?
Including Monday's shooting in Nashville, there have been 14 mass shootings in 2023. A USA TODAY, Associated Press and Northeastern University database dating back to 2006 records any incident in which four or more people are killed by any means within 24 hours.
Another database from the Gun Violence Archive shows Monday's attack as the 130th mass shooting in the United States this year. The record defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people, excluding the shooter, are shot.
How many mass shootings have occurred at schools?
There have been eight mass shootings at K-12 schools since 2006, including this week in Nashville, Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Monday's shooting marks the 89th incident in 2023 in which someone was shot or directed at a K-12 school or a bullet struck school property — an average of one every day — according to the national K-12 School Shooting Database.
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Schools face many shooting threats
Schools across the country face frequent threats of shootings, and history shows those threats to continue after mass shootings. In the days after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, for example, schools in the San Francisco Bay Area faced more than a handful of threats.
“The problem is so deep and we see threats of violence in schools almost every day … It's so hard to know what that's going to be,” Marisa McKeown, Santa Clara County Supervising Deputy District Attorney in the Crime Strategies Unit, said Mercury news at that time.
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Schools are hardening buildings in response
Since the mass shooting that left 26 dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School more than a decade ago, groups such as the American Institute of Architects, the International Association for Environmental Design Crime Prevention and the National Rifle Association have developed guidelines for building and rebuilding schools prevent such killings.
They recommend that education leaders spend school funds on detours to delay visitors from easily entering schools, floor-to-ceiling windows made with durable glass that can protect against threats and allow anyone to see who is coming into the school. campus and surveillance gates, among other features.
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Ali said he supports U.S. Department of Homeland Security authorities designating K-12 schools as critical infrastructure.
“We need to raise the bar on security either to prevent people from thinking about carrying out attacks or to minimize the impact of attacks when they do happen,” Ali said. “We need to make moves on school safety, as we don't seem to be making progress on guns and mental health, or the combination of the two.”
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Contributors: John Bacon, Jorge L. Ortiz, Chris Gadd, Terry Collins, and Grace Hauck
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @kaylajjimenez.
