Audrey Hale, whose mass shooting at the Christian campus in Tennessee left six victims dead in March 2023, was seeking ‘notoriety,’ police said.
The transgender shooter in a mass killing in 2023 at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, was a school alumnus motivated by a quest for notoriety, a final police report concludes. Three children and three adults died in the attack before police shot the killer.
Nashville Police said that Audrey Hale, 28, left behind notebooks, art books, and documents about her plot to attack the Covenant School. Hale, a female, was in part inspired by the 1999 Columbine mass shooting, the report said.
The police department made mention of a highly anticipated manifesto but said that “in this case, a manifesto didn’t exist.”
“Hale never left behind a single document explaining why she committed the attack, why she specifically targeted The Covenant, and what she hoped to gain, if anything, with the attack,” the report said.
“No single document, notebook, or digital device contains the answer to those questions. The answer is scattered throughout all the assembled material.”
Hale opened fire at the Covenant School “due to the notoriety she would obtain” and also “because she had a personal connection to the school from earlier in her life and felt she had to die somewhere that made her happy,” according to the report.
On March 27, 2023, Hale entered the school with a rifle and shot and killed six people before police shot and killed her inside the building. The murder victims were Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old; Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.
“Notoriety was the motive,” the report summary said. “It is known that Hale, and other mass shooters, studied material from Columbine High School prior to committing their attacks.”
Authorities described Hale as female in the report, adding that she “identified as a male and used he/him as preferred pronouns.“ However, the report added, ”Under Tennessee law, a person’s gender identity must correspond with their biological sex or with information present on their certificate of live birth.”
