Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called on the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the shooting at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27 as a hate crime against Christians.
The Nashville Police Department (NPD) identified 28-year-old Audrey Hale as the shooter of six people, including three 9-year-old children, who were confirmed to have been killed at The Covenant School.
Police Chief John Drake identified Hale as transgender, and a LinkedIn page that was allegedly associated with Hale indicated that she used “he/him” pronouns in her biography.
The NPD said Hale was also a former student at the school and was being treated by a physician for an “emotional disorder.”
In his letter to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Hawley called the shooting a targeted attack (pdf).
“An individual identified by police killed six people—students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, and employees Cynthia Peak, Katherine Koonce, and Michael Hill—in a murderous rampage at a Christian school known as The Covenant School,” Hawley wrote.
Surveillance footage shows Hale, wearing camouflage pants and a red baseball cap turned backward, shooting through the glass doors of the school to enter the building.
The NPD later released body-camera footage of the department’s response to the shooting, capturing a search that led officers to the second floor where police shot and killed Hale at 10:27 a.m.
‘Premeditated and Targeted’
Though Hawley said incidents like this are frequently labeled as “senseless violence,” he argued Hale targeted Christians, and pointed to federal law which criminalizes acts of violence against people with religious affiliations as hate crimes.
“According to Nashville law enforcement, Hale’s attack was both premeditated and ‘targeted’ against this Christian school, its students and employees,” Hawley said. “Nashville police chief John Drake announced yesterday that ‘we have a manifesto, we have some writings, that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident . . . . We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.’”
Hawley added that police believe Hale had “some resentment for having to go to that school.”
