Nashville Elementary School Shooter Had Planned Attack For Years, New Report Shows

A new report released Wednesday shines more light on the person who killed three 9-year-olds and three adults at a private Nashville Christian elementary schoolin 2023. According to the nearly 50-page report, Audrey Hale’s initial fascination with mass shootings and school shooters ballooned into planning his own type of attack. For nearly five years, Hale scoped and researched locations where he could unleash terror, and he stocked up on firearms, the Associated Press reports. All the while, Hale’s parents and therapists became increasingly concerned, causing Hale to become more manipulative. He even considered killing his mother so she couldn’t upend his mass shooting plan. As outlined in the new report, the timeline of red flag behavior began in 2011 when Hale was 16 years-old.

From that estimated start date in 2011, Nashville police say Hale became increasingly socially isolated, “failed to establish connections” within his school’s social circles and began contemplating suicide. Noticing a change in her child, Hale’s mother took him to a therapist, who Hale met with for several years. That therapist performed a psychological assessment and concluded Hale suffered from major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobias, anger-management issues, and was underdeveloped both emotionally and socially. Hale carried out the Covenant School shooting on March 23. The people killed in the shooting at Covenant were: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old; Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61. According to police, Hale’s father told law enforcement that when he heard about the Covenant shooting, he suspected that his child was involved.