Nashville school shooting: CCTV shows shooter's entry before killing six

On a Monday morning in Nashville, a 28-year-old former student named Audrey Hale arrived at The Covenant School in a Honda Fit, armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun. Within fourteen minutes, six people were dead: three nine-year-old children and three adults. Police released security footage that evening showing Hale's car pulling up to the school, children visible on swings in the background, then the shooter forcing through shattered glass doors and moving through corridors with a rifle. The video captured the methodical nature of the attack—Hale walking past a room marked "church office," then down another hallway, weapon drawn. No one else appeared on the footage. No sound.

The three children killed were Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all nine years old. The adults were Cynthia Peak, a substitute teacher aged 61; Katherine Koonce, 60, the school's head administrator; and Mike Hill, 61, a custodian. The Covenant School, founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, sits in the affluent Green Hills neighborhood south of downtown Nashville. It serves roughly 200 students from nursery age through elementary school, with about 50 staff members.

What emerged in the hours after the shooting was evidence of deliberate planning. Police found a detailed map Hale had drawn of the school layout, including potential entry points. Investigators determined the shooter had conducted surveillance of the building beforehand. Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters that authorities had recovered "a manifesto, some writings that pertain to this date, the actual incident." He said investigators believed Hale harbored "some resentment for having to go to that school." The weapons—at least two of them—had been obtained legally in the Nashville area. A search of Hale's home later turned up a sawed-off shotgun and a second shotgun.

Police received the first call about an active shooter at 10:13 a.m. Officers began clearing the first floor when they heard gunshots from above. Hale fired at arriving officers from a second-story window. Two members of a five-officer response team opened fire in return, killing Hale at 10:27 a.m. There had been no police officers assigned to the school—it was a church-run facility, and that detail would matter in the aftermath.

Parents rushed to the school in panic. At a nearby church where children were being reunited with their families, the scene was one of collective shock. Rachel Dibble, present at the reunion site, described people "involuntarily trembling." She spoke of the children who had started their morning in uniforms, perhaps eaten breakfast, and whose lives had fundamentally changed in minutes. The school released a statement: "Our community is heartbroken. We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our school and church."

That evening, vigils filled the city. At Belmont United Methodist Church, attendees sang, knelt in prayer, and lit candles while sounds of crying echoed through the space. President Joe Biden, speaking from the White House, called the shooting "a family's worst nightmare" and renewed his call to Congress to pass a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons. The tragedy arrived amid a pattern: just the week before, school shootings had occurred in Denver and the Dallas area within two days of each other. Nashville's shooting was the latest in a recurring American crisis, and the nation's attention, for a moment, turned to a city in mourning and to the question of what might prevent the next one.