Police move through classrooms and hallways decorated with children’s drawings before shooting down a heavily armed gunman: a harrowing video, posted online on Tuesday, shows the intervention that ended the shooting at a school in Nashville, in the southern United States.
Filmed by the on-board cameras of two agents, the images attest to the tension which reigned among the teams deployed Monday morning in the premises of the small Christian school Covenant School.
They also show the speed of their response, after the intrusion of a former student with two assault rifles and a pistol.
Most police officers simply have a bulletproof vest over their T-shirt and brandish a handgun. Those with guns are encouraged to walk past.
When they arrived, an employee informed them that most of the children had been taken to safety, another slipped them keys.
With a siren in the background, we see them moving quickly through the establishment, checking the rooms one by one. A few minutes later, gunshots ring out. “It looks like it’s coming from the top,” says one of them before rushing down the stairs. Other shots are heard, a “Jesus Fuck” is released. The breaths are heavier, the steps faster.
At the end of a corridor, they lead to a kind of hall bathed in light where the shooter stands. From the shattered window, he fired at police arriving as reinforcements.
Immediately, the bullets crackle, the assailant – whose face has been blurred – slides to the ground. “Stop moving”, “remove your hands from your weapon”, shouts a policeman with an already inanimate body. After dismissing the guns, he takes a walkie-talkie and announces: “suspect down”.
Before being shot, he killed three children, aged 9, and three school employees, including its headmistress.
Police ‘follow all leads’
The police sought Tuesday to disentangle the reasons which could push the former student to plan such an attack.
The carnage has sent new shock waves through the country, where firearms have become the number one killer of minors.
After describing him as a young woman, law enforcement clarified that he was a 28-year-old transgender person named Audrey Hale, who used male pronouns to describe herself on the internet.
Police Chief John Drake says it was ‘a targeted attack’: Audrey Hale was in possession of school maps showing entrances and exits and was ‘prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement’ .
Asked about his motives, the policeman mentioned a possible “resentment” towards the Covenant School, a school that defends traditional religious values, where the assailant was educated in his childhood.
John Drake acknowledged “the existence of theory” around his gender identity. “We are following all the leads and when we are fixed, we will let you know,” he added during a press conference on Monday evening.
Clarifications may come from writings left by Audrey Hale. During a search of his home, the police found a document which they described as a “manifesto”.
“No more harm”
Just before the action, the young shooter had also sent a message to an acquaintance to inform him that “something bad” was going to happen. “One day it will be clearer,” Audrey Hale wrote, according to local channel WTVF. “I left enough evidence behind me.”
His interlocutor, Averianna Patton, had contacted the police at 10:13 a.m., but was only contacted again after the tragedy.
Almost at the same time, Audrey Hale broke into the Covenant School by shooting through a glass door.
He was pronounced dead at 10:27 a.m. Police said he had a large stockpile of ammunition and was “prepared to do more harm”.
” Frightened “
In Nashville, capital of Tennessee, the population was in shock. “We hear about the shootings, but it’s different when it’s on your doorstep,” Stacie Wilford, a nurse who came to pray Monday evening at an improvised altar in memory of the victims, told AFP.
This mother explained that her children, attending school not far from the scene of the tragedy, were “lost and frightened”.
The political class shared this emotion but was again divided on the role of firearms: Democratic President Joe Biden renewed his call to ban assault rifles, an option vigorously rejected by elected Republicans.
About 400 million firearms are in circulation in the United States, where in 2020 they caused more than 45,000 deaths by suicide, accident or homicide, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). ).
For the first time that year, weapons became the leading cause of death among young people under the age of 19, with 4,368 deaths, ahead of car accidents and overdoses, according to the CDC.
Despite everything, a majority of Americans remain very attached to carrying arms, in the name of the right to self-defense, and several voices have been raised to regret that there were no armed employees in the school.