(Nashville) Three children and three adults were shot dead Monday in an elementary school in Nashville, in the south of the United States, a drama with still unclear circumstances which has reopened the debate on the ravages of firearms in this country.
According to the police, the person who committed this act, quickly shot dead by the officers who arrived on the scene, would be Audrey Hale, 28 years old.
The assailant entered a small private Christian school in Tennessee’s capital, The Covenant School, in the middle of the morning, armed with two assault rifles and a pistol, shooting through a glass door.
He headed for the first floor of this establishment, which he had attended as a student, firing numerous shots and killing three children, aged 8 and 9, and three adults, aged 60 and 61 years old.
The name of one of the victims, identified as Katherine Koonce, matches that of the school principal, according to the school’s website.
PHOTO KEVIN WURM, VIA REUTERS
The shooting took place at the Covenant School.
Quickly dispatched to the scene, officers immediately shot him dead and he was pronounced dead a quarter of an hour after the first call for help, according to police spokesman Don Aaron.
During the assault, one of the teachers managed to call her daughter. “She told me she was hiding in a closet and it was shooting everywhere,” Avery Myrick told local channel WSMV4.
PHOTO ANDREW NELLES, THE TENNESSEAN, SUPPLIED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Relieved that her mother made it out alive, Ms.me Myrick said he “feels for everyone” who lost loved ones in the carnage.
Some confusion about the assailant’s gender identity persisted in the hours following the tragedy. Police have identified the suspect as 28-year-old female and transgender, going by the name Audrey Hale, but her LinkedIn profile appears to indicate a willingness to use male pronouns.
“Disgusting”
Anxious parents marched all day through a church to pick up the sheltered children.
PHOTO JONATHAN MATTISE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The children were taken to a church near the school.
The motive, still unknown, could be linked to a “grudge” against this school, noted Nashville Police Chief John Drake.
A “manifesto” discovered during a search of Audrey Hale’s home mentioned other potential targets, he said.
This document as well as a plan “showing the accesses” of the school, and additional “writings” found in his vehicle seem to indicate that the carnage was premeditated.
President Joe Biden has expressed his dismay at the “repugnant” crime and ordered that the White House flags be flown at half-mast.
Gun violence “rips at the very soul of our nation,” he said from the White House, calling again on Congress to ban assault rifles.
The Democrat has long pleaded for the US Parliament to prohibit, or at least restrict, the possession of these weapons designed to cause a maximum number of victims, but he comes up against the refusal of the opposition.
“I am devastated and heartbroken at the tragic news from the Covenant School,” tweeted Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, while his colleague Marsha Blackburn called to “pray” for the victims.
4368 dead
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). ).
And for the first time that year, weapons became the leading cause of death among young people aged 1 to 19, with 4,368 deaths, ahead of car accidents and overdoses, according to the CDC.
Bloodbaths in schools represent only a tiny portion, but mark the spirits more.
The United States was particularly shaken by the carnage committed in 2012 in a school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut (20 children killed), and in May 2022 in Uvalde, Texas (19 children and two teachers killed).
Between these two tragedies, a massacre committed in 2018 in a school in Parkland, Florida, had led to a vast mobilization.
But Congress never passed meaningful reforms, fiercely opposed by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) lobby group.
Joe Biden’s calls to ban assault rifles are hardly more likely to succeed. An ABC News poll/washington post of February showed that 51% of Americans oppose it and that only 47% are in favor.