At least 3 children and 3 adults killed in Nashville elementary school shooting

Our live coverage of the Nashville school shooting has moved here.

Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas released a statement Monday confirming that their former pastor, Chad Scruggs, lost his daughter Hallie in Monday’s shooting at the Covenant School.

CNN had reported that Hallie Scruggs was among the three 9-year-old students shot and killed in the shooting.

Here is the church’s statement:

“The Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCPC) family is incredibly saddened by the unimaginable tragedy today at Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville, TN. Covenant Presbyterian Church is a sister church of PCPC; many of our members have deep friendships and family connections there.
Chad Scruggs, current Lead Pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, served for several years as Associate Pastor at PCPC. PCPC Senior Pastor, Mark Davis shared, “We love the Scruggs family and mourn with them over their precious daughter Hallie. Together, we trust in the power of Christ to draw near and give us the comfort and hope we desperately need.”

In messages shared with CNN affiliate WTVF, a former middle school basketball teammate of Audrey Hale provides chilling new details regarding an exchange she had on social media with the shooter prior to yesterday’s school shooting in Nashville. 

Averianna Patton said she saw a message on her phone that Hale had sent to her on Instagram Monday morning that stated Hale was planning to die by suicide and that she would see it on the news. A screenshot of a message published by WTVF appeared to show that the message was sent at 9:57 a.m. local time.

“One day this will make more sense,” Hale wrote. “I’ve left behind more than enough evidence behind. But something bad is about to happen,” the message stated. 

“I tried to comfort and encourage her and subsequently reached out to the Suicide Prevention Help Line after being instructed to by my father at 10:08 am,” Patton said. 

Patton tells WTVF that she she called the Nashville Davidson County Sheriff’s Office at 10:13 a.m. to make them aware of the situation and was instructed to call Nashville’s non-emergency number. 

“I called Nashville’s non-emergency line at 10:14 a.m. and was on hold for nearly seven minutes before speaking with someone who said that they would send an officer to my home. An officer did not come to my home until 3:29 p.m.,” Patton said.

Don Aaron, spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department, said during a news conference that the first calls of an active shooting came in at around 10:15 a.m. local time.

When officers arrived, they went through the first level of the building, he said. They then heard gunshots coming from the second level of the building, according to Aaron. He said that’s where police confronted and killed the shooter at 10:27 a.m. local time.

Police in Nashville are still digging into the background and motivations of a former student who entered a Christian elementary school armed with AR-style weapons and detailed maps and opened fire, killing three children and three adults.

If you are just reading in, here’s the latest on the shooting and investigation:

The shooter: The person was identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale. Hale was shot and killed by police during the Monday attack, and left behind “drawn out” maps of the Covenant School detailing “how this was all going to take place,” Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. As police work to piece together what led up to the violence, officials said they had determined where the shooter lived in the Nashville area and have interviewed Hale’s father. 

Hale, who attended the Christian school years ago, left writings that pertain to the shooting and had scouted a second possible attack location in Nashville, “but because of a threat assessment by the suspect – there’s too much security – they decided not to,” police chief said.The writings revealed that the attack at Covenant School “was calculated and planned,” Metro Nashville said.

So far, little is known about the shooter. Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the president of the school confirmed to CNN, and a LinkedIn profile says Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper.

Police have referred to Hale as the “female shooter” and at an evening press conference added that Hale was transgender. When asked for clarification, a spokesperson told CNN Hale used “male pronouns” on a social media profile.

The weapons: The shooter was “someone that had multiple rounds of ammunition, prepared for confrontation with law enforcement, prepared to do more harm than was actually done,” the police chief said in a news conference.

Three weapons – an AR-style rifle, an AR-style pistol and a handgun – were found and police believe Hale obtained at least two of the weapons legally, Drake said. A search warrant executed at Hale’s home also resulted in the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence, according to police.

The victims: All three students shot and killed were 9 years old. They were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. Three adults killed in the shooting were identified as 61-year-old Cynthia Peak, 60-year-old Katherine Koonce and 61-year-old Mike Hill, police said. Two Covenant School employees are among the victims of Monday’s mass shooting, according to the school.

What is expected to happen today: Investigators were expected to spend Tuesday processing the scene and gathering more details about what happened during the roughly 14 minutes of terror at the elementary school.

Mass shootings in America: The attack marked the 19th shooting at a school or university so far in 2023 in which at least one person was wounded, according to a CNN tally. With six victims, the shooting at Covenant is the deadliest school shooting since the attack in Uvalde, Texas, last May left 21 people dead.

Read more about the shooting here.

Kris Brown, the president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, said the solutions to stopping mass shootings “are before us and they have been for a long time” but it will take voters to make the change.

“It’s the Brady background check system. It’s ensuring that every state has an extreme risk protection law. It’s ensuring that every state has a permitting system … and it’s making sure that across the country we have a renewed assault weapons ban,” Brown told CNN on Tuesday.
“If you don’t want this to happen anymore, vote, vote. Make sure that every time you vote you focus on which candidates actually stand for gun violence prevention or they stand with the gun industry. And if they stand with the gun industry what that means is that is profits over lives. And it’s just that simple.”

Brady is a US nonprofit that advocates for gun control and against gun violence.

“It takes all of us. This isn’t just on the kids. This is on adults,” Brown added. “This is on their grandparents. This is on us and we can make a difference, but we have to make it an absolute priority and then hold elected officials to account when they do not vote ‘yes’ on bills to advance lifesaving measures.”

A more heartrending and quintessentially American scene is hard to imagine.

A human chain of children, hand-in-hand, shepherded by police officers, fled the latest school struck by unfathomable tragedy. On Monday, it was Nashville’s turn to join the roster of cities made notorious by a mass shooting epidemic much of the country seems prepared to tacitly accept as the price of the right to own high-powered firearms. 

The reality of what unfolded inside was inhuman, but it can unfortunately be imagined given the gruesome insider accounts that emerged from previous school shootings — in Uvalde, Texas, last year, or at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012.

Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 years old, were gunned down by a shooter armed with two AR-style weapons and a handgun, two of which police said were bought legally. Their names — known only to the rest of America in death — were released by police about the same time as they should have been going home from Covenant School for the day.

Three staff, all half a century older, also died. They were Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.

They were all murdered in the place that should be the safest: where kids go to school. But a plague of recent classroom rampages, distinguished even among America’s gun violence by their depravity, shows that nowhere is really secure.

Read the full analysis here.

The Covenant School that was the scene of Monday’s school shooting in Nashville said their community is “heartbroken” following the attack that killed three young students and three staff members.

The private Christian elementary school released a statement to CNN affiliate WZTV.

“We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our school and church. We are focused on loving our students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing,” the school said in the statement.
“Law enforcement is conducting its investigation, and while we understand there is a lot of interest and there will be a lot of discussion about and speculation surrounding what happened, we will continue to prioritize the well-being of our community.”

The Covenant School said “we are tremendously grateful to the first responders who acted quickly to protect our students, faculty and staff” and asked for “privacy as our community grapples with this terrible tragedy.”

The two Metro Nashville Police Department officers who fatally shot school shooting suspect Audrey Hale have been identified as Officer Rex Englebert and Officer Michael Collazo, according to a news release from MNPD. 

Englebert is a four-year veteran with MNPD and Collazo has been with the department for nine years, police said. 

Hale was fatally shot on the second floor in a common area of the school where the shooter had been opening fire through a window at arriving police cars, the release said. 

Writings recovered from Hale revealed that the attack was calculated and planned, police said. 

A search warrant executed at Hale’s Nashville home resulted in the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence, police said. 

Audrey Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the school’s president confirmed to CNN Monday.

Nossi College of Art & Design is described on its website as “the only college in Tennessee designed specifically as an art school.”

Police earlier identified Hale, 28, as the shooter Monday in the killing of three 9-year-old students and three adults at the Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville where the shooter was a former student. Hale was shot and killed by police during the attack, which was the deadliest school shooting in nearly a year.

A LinkedIn profile said Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper.

Two Covenant School employees are among the victims of Monday’s mass shooting, according to the school.

Katherine Koonce was identified as the head of the school on its website.

Mike Hill was identified in the staff section of the Covenant Presbyterian Church’s website, which is now offline. He was listed as facilities/kitchen staff. A friend of Mike Hill confirmed his image to CNN. Hill, 61, was a custodian at the school, per police.

President Joe Biden has ordered the flags at the White House and all federal buildings be flown at half-staff to honor the victims from Monday’s school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.

The order will be in effect until Friday, according to the White House.

A mother who lost her son in a 2018 mass shooting told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Monday’s shooting in Nashville took her back to that moment as her other son was in lockdown at a nearby high school.

Shaundelle Brooks lost her son, Akilah DaSilva, during a mass shooting at a Nashville-area Waffle House in 2018. Her other son, Aldane Brooks, was placed on lockdown at a nearby high school on Monday when the shooting occurred at Covenant School.

“We didn’t know if we were safe,” Aldane Brooks told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “We didn’t know if someone was coming to kill us or not.”

Brooks added that she wanted to race to her son’s school the moment she heard news of a shooting, but he told her to wait as they had no information as to what was going on.

“We’re not safe anywhere,” Brooks said, “We’re not safe in schools, we’re not safe when we go out to eat, we’re not safe in church, we’re not safe at the Waffle House.”

Brooks said she thinks about mass shootings every time she drops her son off at school.

The mother and son addressed families of the victims of Monday’s shooting saying they “understand this feeling first hand.”

“The pain will forever be there, but you’re not alone,” Aldane Brooks said.

In a tweet, Metro Nashville Police shared a photo of the car driven by Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale as well as the doors that the shooter shot out to gain entry into the school.

Inside the vehicle, additional material written by the shooter was found, the tweet said.

“Active shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, drove this Honda Fit to the Covenant Church/school campus this morning and parked. MNPD detectives searched it and found additional material written by Hale.”

In a second tweet, police released photos of the doors the shooter shot out to enter the building.

“Hale entered the Covenant building after shooting out the glass of these doors,” the tweet said.

A survivor of the Highland Park, Illinois shooting in July was visiting Nashville at time of Monday’s shooting at Covenant School.

Ashbey Beasley told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday evening that she was visiting her sister-in-law in Nashville and was set to have lunch with a friend when she heard about the shooting.

Following the Highland Park shooting, Beasley has joined a gun violence prevention group and dedicated her life to making a change with gun laws.

“It’s the access to guns that is killing us,” Beasley said, “We’re not going to see any change until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation,”

“Unfortunately that’s where we’re at, we have to take care of each other, survivors have to take care of each other,” Beasley said.

Beasley jumped in a news conference earlier Monday, following the Nashville shooting, to protest against gun violence.

Former president Barack Obama took to Twitter to share the video of Beasley during that news conference saying, “We are failing our children. Guns are now the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. Michelle and I mourn with the students and families of the Covenant School today.” 

The shooter who killed six people at Covenant School in Nashville Monday may have resented having to attend the school in the past, according to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake.

Police said Monday they believe the 28-year-old shooter attended the school, but they weren’t sure what years.

“There’s some belief that there was some resentment at having to go to that school, don’t have all the details for that just yet, and that’s why this incident occurred,” Drake said during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Nightly News.

Drake said the shooter targeted random people in the school.

At least three students and three adults are dead following a shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, the Metro Nashville Police Department said Monday. The students who were killed were all 9 years old, police said.

The shooter, who was identified as a 28-year-old former student of the school, was also killed in a shootout with police.

Here’s what we know so far:

In a statement sent to CNN, Bryan Chapell of the Presbyterian Church in America expressed the church’s condolences to the victims of the Covenant School shooting.

“Our heartfelt concerns and prayers are for the families of Covenant Presbyterian Church, the Covenant School and the Nashville community. We grieve the loss and trauma associated with this horrible tragedy. May God comfort all who mourn. May He provide wisdom to the authorities as they investigate as well as to the church leadership as they minister to a grieving congregation and community.”

Covenant School was founded as a ministry of the Covenant Presbyterian Church, according to its website. The church is part of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Police will spend the next two days processing the scene and working to gather more details about what happened during a shooting at a Nashville elementary school, the Metro Nashville Police Department said.

This will likely occur Monday evening into Tuesday, said the department’s spokesperson, Don Aaron.

Aaron said police also intend to release video soon.

Police also said they knew where the shooter lived and they interviewed the shooter’s father and will continue their investigation.

According to Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake, the person who killed six people, including three children at Covenant School in Nashville Monday has been identified as Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old Nashville resident. 

Drake said that they have determined that maps were drawn of the school with details of surveillance and entry points.

The shooter gained entry into the school by shooting through one of the doors, he added. 

Drake said police have interviewed the shooter’s father.

The suspect in Monday’s shooting was armed with three firearms, Metro Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake said.

“We know there were two AR-style weapons. One a rifle, another was an AR-style pistol and the other was a handgun,” Drake said during a news conference Monday. “We believe two of those may have been obtained legally, locally here.”

Police have located writings and a map associated with the shooting at the Covenant School, according to Metro Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake.

“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date,” said Drake at a Monday afternoon press conference. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all gonna take place.”

He added that the school was the only location targeted by the shooter.

The 28-year-old shooter had drawn detailed maps of Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said during a news conference Monday.

“We’ve also determined that there were maps drawn of the school in detail of — surveillance, entry points, et cetera. We know and believe entry was gained through shooting through one of the doors, is how they actually got into the school,” the police chief said.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper said too many children are dying from guns — a point punctuated by a mass shooting at an elementary school Monday morning that killed six people, three of them children.

“The leading cause of kids’ death now is guns and gunfire and that is unacceptable,” Cooper said.

A recent study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in December backs that point, finding that homicide is a leading cause of death for children in the United States and the overall rate has increased an average of 4.3% each year for nearly a decade.

Cooper said he is “overwhelmed at the thought of the loss of these families, of the future lost by these children and their families.”

He said the community needs to come together and support each other.

When President Joe Biden was initially briefed on the Nashville school shooting that killed six people, he had a “quite visceral” reaction to the news that children were among the casualties, according to a senior administration official familiar with Biden’s response to the news. 

Biden has been kept up to date throughout the day as more information has come out about the circumstances surrounding the Nashville shooting. 

Earlier this afternoon, Biden lamented in remarks in the East Room that gun violence was “ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation, ripping at the very soul of the nation.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said she has been thinking and praying for the community, acknowledging the shooting at the top of her remarks during the State Banquet in Ghana.

“This community has been changed forever. So to the people of Nashville, please know that we are thinking of you and that you are in our prayers and in our hearts and that Doug and I send you all of our best during this time of grief,” Harris said.

The three students who were shot and killed at Covenant School were all 9 years old, the Metro Nashville Police Department said in a tweet Monday.

They have been identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, according to police.

Three adults were also killed in the shooting. They have been identified as 61-year-old Cynthia Peak, 60-year-old Katherine Koonce and 61-year-old Mike Hill, police said.

Nashville police are expected to give an update on its investigation into the school shooting soon.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged the school shooting in Nashville and those who affected by it on Monday afternoon.

“We’re holding in our hearts those affected by this horrible tragedy, and thank the first responders who were on the scene,” Schumer said during remarks on the Senate floor on Monday.

The politician did not mention any potential congressional action on any new gun-related legislation.

Sports teams located in Nashville are showing their support for the community after a school shooting killed six people, three of them children.

“We are heartbroken by the senseless loss of life at Covenant School today,” the Tennessee Titans said on Twitter, offering condolences to the families of those who were killed.

Several Titans players also posted messages on Twitter:

Major League Soccer’s Nashville SC said it is “devastated by today’s horrific school shooting and the thoughts that these innocent children and staff won’t be coming home.”

Nashville SC midfielder Dax McCarty added in his own tweet that he drives by the Covenant School every day on his way to training.

“Its easy to wallow in your own misery after a bad game or a bad day, but news like this hits you in the chest like a freight train and you realize how trivial those feelings are,” McCarty said.

Vanderbilt Athletics retweeted a statement from Chancellor Daniel Diermeier pledging to share as much information as possible with the community.

Tennessee state representative Bob Freeman said that he “broke down in tears” after watching video of children being escorted from Covenant School after a school shooting that killed six.

He told CNN in an interview on Monday afternoon that he has been receiving calls from concerned parents, asking for details and updates on their children.

“That’s not something you want to have to field calls for,” he said. “All across our city tonight at dinner, we’re going to have some tough conversations with our kids.”

“We’re gonna need answers. We’re gonna need some comfort to at least move forward to believe that this can’t happen again. We’re gonna need to trust that our kids are safe. You drop your kids off at school, you expect to pick him up at the end of the day and you expect the school and the school system to keep them safe. That’s a pretty low bar to expect from the school system and we’ve got to do better.”

Freeman mentioned that he has three children in the age range served by Covenant School. “There’s a very high likelihood that one of their friends or acquaintances was one of the injured and/or deceased,” he said.

He called for action to combat school shootings but said that state officials “don’t have the courage to do it.”

“Other countries have had a meaningful impact on gun violence, and there’s a playbook that we should follow,” he said.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland has been briefed on the school shooting in Nashville Monday morning that left six dead, according to a Justice Department spokesperson.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration has been in contact with the Justice Department and local officials about the investigation.

Special agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene of the shooting, the Justice Department said, and are assisting local partners.

The 28-year old shooter who killed six people at a private school in Nashville was once a student at the school, according to initial findings from police.

At a Monday press conference, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said, “From my initial findings, at one point, she was a student at that school.”

He added that he was unsure what year she had attended the school.

Drake did not give the woman’s name and said the investigation was ongoing. He said police have identified where she lived in Nashville.

There was a “car nearby that gave us clues” into who she was, he added.

The shooter was killed by police after fatally shooting three adults and three children at Covenant School on Monday.

President Joe Biden called the shooting at a Nashville school that killed six people, including three children, “heartbreaking, a family’s worst nightmare.”

The president, who was speaking at Small Business Administration’s Women’s Business Summit Monday, said more needs to be done to stop gun violence.

The shooting took place at the Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville that teaches preschool through 6th grade, Nashville police said.

Officials said the shooter was armed with at least two “assault-type” rifles and a handgun.

Biden called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, saying we “need to do more to protect our schools.”

“It’s about time we began to make some more progress,” he said.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, a Democrat, echoed the president’s remarks, saying he strongly supports “bills to ban assault weapons from civilian use and to close gaps in our background check system.”

He urged lawmakers to come up with a bipartisan solution, but that is extremely unlikely this Congress with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate and a GOP-led House.

Last year the Senate passed the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” the first major piece of legislation to address gun violence since 1994. The legislation fell short of what some Democrats had hoped for, including their long hope of banning assault weapons.

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CNN’s Nicky Robertson contributed reporting to this post.

A woman working across the street from the Covenant School described watching the police arrive at the scene of the Monday morning mass shooting in Nashville.

Jozen Reodica, who works at Shearwater Health across the street from the Covenant School, told CNN she realized something was wrong when she saw several police cars arrive at the scene.

Reodica shot video of police escorting students out of the school, which is a private Christian elementary school. The students were holding hands and walking in a line, according to Reodica.

Three students and three adults were killed in the shooting, according to police. The shooter, a 28-year old woman, was killed by police at the scene.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on lawmakers — including Republicans — to pass gun safety legislation in the wake of the Nashville school shooting that resulted in six dead Monday.

She pointed to President Joe Biden’s remarks calling for Congress to address gun violence during his State of the Union address last month.

“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system, or to require the safe storage of guns? We need to do something,” she said. 

Jean-Pierre said Biden will address the Nashville shooting during scheduled remarks at the White House Monday afternoon. She said the president has been briefed on the shooting and is in contact with officials.

A female shooter was killed by police after killing three students and three adults at the Covenant School, according to Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron.

Any legislation to pass comprehensive gun legislation faces an uphill battle in a divided Congress, while the Republican-controlled House has shown little interest in gun control legislation.

Still, Jean-Pierre said Biden would continue to call on Congress to take action, adding Biden “has done almost as much as he can from the federal level to show how important this is to him.”

The Nashville Fire Department tried to provide life-saving efforts during Monday’s shooting incident at Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian Church, authorities said Monday during a news conference.  

“Our crews were able to be on scene to pull out those that had viable signs of life. Those that were still showing the option to be saved,” Nashville Fire Department’s Kendra Loney said.  

A reunification site was set up soon after with “mental health specialists and professionals” for the families and students, Loney added.  

On a typical day, there’s about 200 students and about 40 to 50 staff members inside the school, Don Aaron with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said.

It’s unclear how many people were in the school Monday.  

“There is video from the school that we are viewing now to try to learn exactly how all of this happened,” Aaron said.  

Officials said another update on the incident is expected sometime soon. Aaron said they’d tweet when the next update is expected.   

The shooter who killed six at a Nashville private school on Monday morning was a 28-year-old woman, according to police. Authorities previously said she appeared to be a teenager.

“3 students & 3 adult staff members from Covenant School were fatally shot by the active shooter, who has now been identified as a 28-year-old Nashville woman,” police said in a tweet.

In a news conference earlier, a spokesperson for the police department had said the deceased shooter appeared to be a teenager. 

The woman has still not been identified by name. Police have not shared a possible motive for the shooting or identified a connection between the woman and the school.

Local officials say they are standing with the six people killed Monday in a shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper said in a tweet his “heart goes out to the families of the victims” and thanked officials for their response.

Rep. Andy Ogles, who represents Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District which includes the Covenant School, said he is “devastated by the tragedy,” in a statement on Twitter.

Ogles said as a father, “I am utterly heartbroken by this senseless act of violence,” according to the statement.

He said he will monitor the situation and is working with local officials.

Readers were quick to remind Ogles of a photo he posted on Facebook in Christmas 2022 when he was Mayor of Maury County that showed him and his family standing in front of a Christmas tree holding weapons, with the caption “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who represents parts of Nashville and West Tennessee, also tweeted that her office is in contact with officials at all levels.

First lady Jill Biden reacted to the Nashville school shooting while at an event in Washington, DC, on Monday.

Following Monday morning’s shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, is there have been at least 130 mass shooting in the US so far in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

The Gun Violence Archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter. 

Three students and three adults were killed at the Covenant School. The shooter, who was identified as a 28-year-old Nashville woman, was also killed in a shootout with police.

Last year, the US hit 100 mass shootings on March 19, per the GVA. The previous year, 2021, saw a late March date as well. From 2018 to 2020, the country didn’t reach 100 mass shootings until May.

This post has updated with the latest figures from the Gun Violence Archive.

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the Nashville school shooting, according to a White House official.

At least three children and three adults were killed, police said. Several agencies are responding.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration is in contact with the Justice Department and local officials about the ongoing investigation. The president also wants to express his appreciation for first responders, she said.

While officials don’t yet know all of the details about what happened, “we know that too often our schools and communities are being devastated by gun violence,” Jean-Pierre said.

“Schools should be safe spaces for our kids to grow and learn and for our educators to teach,” she added.

Officials do not yet know the identity of the shooter who killed at least six at a Nashville private school on Monday morning.

Don Aaron of the Metro Nashville Police Department said that police are still working to identify the shooter, who was fatally shot by police.

He said that they do not yet know whether she had any connection to the school, although she “appeared” to be a teenager. Police later identified the shooter as a 28-year-old Nashville woman.

At least three students and three adults are dead following a shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, police said Monday.

“We now know that there are three students who were fatally wounded as well as three adults inside the school. We are working to identify those victims. Including the shooter, a total of seven persons were killed as a result of this morning’s incident at the school,” Don Aaron of the Metro Nashville Police Department said.

Five of the six shooting victims were transported, Aaron said. All those who were shot are dead, he added.

“Three students who were shot are deceased. Three staff members who were shot are deceased,” Aaron told reporters.

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The shooter who opened fire at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, was a female, according to police.

Don Aaron of the Metro Nashville Police Department said in a news conference Monday that the shooter “appears to be in her teens,” but her identification has “not been confirmed.”

Police later identified the shooter as a 28-year-old Nashville woman.

Aaron said that officers arriving to the scene encountered “a female who was firing.”

Two responding officers opened fire on the shooter and she was fatally shot, Aaron said.

She was armed with at least two “assault-type” rifles and a handgun, Aaron added.

Don Aaron, spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department, said police arrived quickly to a call of an active shooter at the Covenant School Monday.

Aaron, speaking at a news conference a few hours after the shooting, said the first calls came in at around 10:15 a.m. local time.

When officers arrived, they went through the first level of the building first, he said.

They then heard gunshots coming from the second level of the building, according to Aaron. He said that’s where police encountered the shooter, who he described as a female teenager.

Officers shot the shooter, Aaron said.

The Nashville Metro Police are giving an update on the shooting at the Covenant School.

Police said in a tweet earlier Monday that the shooter is dead.

At least three students are dead from gunshot wounds suffered at the Covenant School in Nashville, Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt tells CNN affiliates, WTVF, WZTV. 

All three of the students were pronounced dead after arrival at the hospital. 

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department confirmed the shooter was dead earlier.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is monitoring the situation at the Covenant School in Nashville after an active shooting killed at least three children Monday.

The governor said in a tweet that the Tennessee Department of Safety and the Tennessee Highway Patrol are both assisting other agencies on the scene. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation also said it is helping.

The school teaches kids from preschool through 6th grade, according to its website.

See the governor’s tweet:

Special agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and other personnel are responding to the Covenant School shooting in Green Hills at the request of District Attorney General Glenn Funk, according to a tweet from the agency.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department indicated there isn’t a current threat to public safety, the tweet added. Authorities have confirmed that the shooter is dead.

The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, where police say there was an active shooting incident Monday, teaches preschool through 6th grade.

The Covenant School is a private Christian school founded in 2001 as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church. It has an average enrollment of about 200 people in recent years, according to its website.

The Nashville Fire Department said there were “multiple patients” in the shooting and the gunman is dead, officials said.

The Nashville Fire Department said that multiple people are hurt after “an active aggressor” at Covenant School, it said in a tweet.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Nashville Field Division also tweeted that special agents are responding to assist the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department with the active shooter incident.

The Metro Nashville Police Department tweeted it engaged with an active shooter at Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian Church, on Burton Hills Drive and the shooter is dead.

Student reunification with parents is at Woodmont Baptist Church, 2100 Woodmont Blvd.