Nashville police: Covenant shooter was motivated by notoriety, not politics
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The Covenant School. Photo: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
Nashville police have closed the investigation into the 2023 shooting at The Covenant School. Detectives found the shooter meticulously planned the attack for several years in an effort to gain notoriety.
Why it matters: The motive for the shooting, which killed six people including three 9-year-old children, has been hotly debated. It has become a pitched political issue in the Tennessee legislature and beyond.
- A 48-page investigative summary released by police on Wednesday explicitly ruled out speculation that the shooting was motivated by race, religion, gender or political ideology.
Zoom in: Police said the shooter, whom they identify as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, idolized mass shooters, rating them by "the number of people they killed, what targets they selected, and the level of notoriety they achieved."
- Hale wanted to achieve the same kind of notoriety, police found. Hale also left behind years of journal entries, videos and planning documents in hopes of inspiring others to commit similar attacks.
- Police officers responding to the shooting fatally shot Hale. But investigators said Hale left behind robust documentation "in a way no other mass killer has done before."
What they're saying: "There have been numerous theories proposed by parties outside the investigation as to why Hale committed the attack," police wrote. "Some theories have been based on snippets of Hale's writings leaked to the media, while others have been wildly posited for no other reason than to elicit controversy or attention. Based on the available material, those theories can easily be debunked."
- Although Hale "raged" at times over race, economics and religion in the journals, police said, those issues did not figure into plans for the shooting.
"At no point did [Hale] claim she was targeting specific individuals within any location, and the only demographical factor she considered in target selection was it had to involve children," in part because Hale believed killing children would generate more attention.
- Hale considered several other locations for a potential shooting, including other schools, the Opry Mills mall and busy roads, police said. Hale, who was a former Covenant student, settled on Covenant because the campus was familiar.
Zoom out: The report documents Hale's extensive mental health issues and homicidal ideation. At one point, at a therapist's urging, Hale's parents took a stash of guns. Hale was later able to buy more. Hale hid those weapons and the shooting plans from family members.
Between the lines: The police document confirmed that Hale, who was assigned female at birth, identified as male and had started using male pronouns in the lead-up to the shooting. Police did not link Hale's gender identity to the shooting.
- The document identified Hale as a woman and used female pronouns throughout.
The bottom line: Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly have pushed to release Hale's writings publicly. A legal fight about their release is ongoing.
- Police concluded their statement on Wednesday with a warning: "It is this police department's concerted belief that Hale's specific action plan, if ever made public, would be used by future potential mass murderers … to attack and kill innocent persons, including school children."