Three children and three adults were killed by an attacker who carried two assault-style weapons and a pistol into an elementary school in Nashville on Monday, police said.
Officers shot and killed the attacker at the Covenant School, attached to the Covenant Presbyterian church in the Tennessee state capital.
Lamenting the “heartbreaking” attack, Joe Biden repeated his call for Congress to pass meaningful gun control reform including an assault weapons ban.
“We have to do more to stop gun violence ripping our communities apart,” the president said at the White House. “It’s ripping the soul from this nation.”
The Nashville police chief, John Drake, said: “I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building.”
Nashville police identified the dead. They were: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all nine years old; Cynthia Peak, a substitute teacher aged 61; Katherine Koonce, aged 60; and Mike Hill, a custodian, aged 61.
The shooter was named as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28 and from Nashville.
Drake said Hale was a former student at the school. He also said Hale identified as transgender.
Entry was gained by shooting through a door, Drake said, adding that maps had been drawn of the school, including entry points, and he said, “We have a manifesto, some writings that we’re going over.”
Asked if the suspect’s transgender identity had any bearing on the attack, Drake said “there was some theory to that [but] we’re investigating all the leads”.
Hale had “no [criminal] history at all”, Drake said, adding that one AR-style weapon in the attack was a rifle and one a pistol while the other gun was a handgun. Police believed two of the guns were obtained legally, Drake said.
Authorities were speaking to the shooter’s father, Drake added.
Don Aaron, a police spokesperson, said the first call about the shooting came at 10.13am. The shooter, Aaron said “entered on the lower floor. There were shots all over the floor before [the shooter] went to the upper level. And it was on the upper level where [the shooter] was confronted by police and killed.”
The shooting happened in a “lobby-type area” and “not in a classroom per se”, Aaron said. The shooter was dead by 10.27am after being engaged by two of five officers. One officer was wounded by cut glass, Aaron said. No other injuries were reported.
Drake said the school had an active shooter protocol. He said some children “evacuated to a wood line” behind the school, while some went to a fire hall. After the shooting, children were seen walking, holding hands and surrounded by police cars, to the nearby Woodmont Baptist church, to be reunited with parents.
Aaron said there were no police personnel assigned to the school. Drake said security footage would be released.
The shooting was just the latest such horrific event. Last May, in Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school. More recently, a six-year-old shot his teacher in Virginia and a high-school student in Colorado shot two administrators.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database resource, there have been at least 89 instances of gun violence at kindergarten through 12th-grade schools or during school activities in the US this year.
The Nashville shooting was the 128th US mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one where at least four people are wounded or killed, not counting the attacker.
The Covenant School has about 209 students from pre-school through sixth grade and 42 staff members, Aaron said. A woman whose mother teaches at the school told reporters they texted as the attack took place.
Avery Myrick said: “She said she was hiding in the closet and that they were shooting all over, and that they were potentially trying to get into a room. It was really scary, really sad.”
Hannah McDonald, a reporter for News Channel 5, told viewers her mother-in-law worked at the school but was on a break when the shooting happened.
“My mother-in-law is the front-desk angel,” McDonald said. “The school is kind of situated sideways, if you will. So the front door is actually on the side of the building. And that’s where she sits, and so you walk down a long exterior pathway to the front door, and then you see her smiling face in the morning there. She was outside the school and she heard gunshots.”
Drake said: “It could have been far, far worse.”
David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said authorities sent “heartfelt prayers to the families … of these victims”.
He added: “Now I know there’ll be people who want to criticise us for prayers. That’s the way we do that in the south. We believe in prayer and we believe in the power of prayer. So our prayers go out to these families.”
Legislative leaders said the Republican-dominated Tennessee statehouse would meet briefly on Monday evening and delay taking up any legislation.
At the White House, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeated Biden’s call for meaningful federal reform. Legislation passed last year expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and intervention programs.
The president, Jean-Pierre said, “wants Congress to act because enough is enough. 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 safe storage. We need to do something.”
Biden called the shooting “a family’s worst nightmare”.
“I want to commend the police, who responded credibly, swiftly, within minutes,” he said, adding: “We have to do more to stop gun violence.”
