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“It is known that Hale considered the actions of other mass murderers,” the statement said. It did not elaborate.
Hale was a former student at the school, police said. The writings were found in a vehicle in the school’s parking lot and inside Hale’s bedroom, police said. The writings are under review by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Va., along with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, police said.
Police said no motive has yet been established for the shooting at the school, which is an academy within a Presbyterian church. But the assailant, they said, had considered other targets for mass killings.
Police earlier said that Hale carried two rifles as well as a handgun into the school. On Wednesday they added somber details, saying the shooter fired 152 rounds, 126 from a rifle and 26 from a 9mm weapon.
Two officers found Hale on the second level of the school and killed the shooter, firing a total of four rifle rounds and four rounds from a 9mm pistol, the statement said.
Graphic body-camera footage showed officers racing through hallways filled with colorful children’s art and weaving through bathrooms, until they came upon Hale.
The Nashville school shooting is the latest in a cycle of carnage that has left Americans dead in churches, nightclubs, hospitals, small businesses and at a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, Calif.
In 2023 so far, 136 mass shootings have occurred, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a database which defines a mass shooting as a minimum of four victims shot.
In Nashville, authorities identified the six victims as 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, as well as staff members Mike Hill, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Cynthia Peak, 61. Nashville police initially said the shooter was a 28-year-old woman, and then later said Hale was transgender, citing a social media profile in which Hale used masculine pronouns. The Washington Post has not yet confirmed how Hale identified.
Dressed in part in camouflage, Hale entered the school by shooting out a glass door and roamed the hallways inside the Christian school, according to the ongoing police investigation.
Hale was under a doctor’s care for an “unspecified emotional disorder,” police said last week. But they said Hale had no criminal record.
Hale’s parents thought their child “should not own weapons,” John Drake, the Nashville police chief, said in a news conference. He said they had pressured Hale to sell one weapon, but told police they did not know about six other weapons.
All seven guns were legally purchased at five nearby gun shops, Drake said.
