Police Respond to Shooting at Covenant School in Green Hills

Police on Monday morning responded to a shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school serving preschool through sixth-grade students in Green Hills. 

According to the Metro Nashville Police Department, “The shooter was engaged by MNPD and is dead.” Parents are being directed to reunify with students at Woodmont Baptist Church at 2100 Woodmont Blvd. There are multiple road closures in the area.

Police say seven people were killed in the shooting — three adults, three children and the shooter. The Nashville Fire Department said that there are "multiple patients." At a press conference Monday afternoon, MNPD spokesperson Don Aaron said that the shooter was a woman armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun who gained entrance through a side door.

MNPD later identified the shooter as 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale. "From my initial findings ... at one point she was a student at that school," said MNPD Chief John Drake Monday afternoon. A police spokesperson noted that the shooter was assigned female at birth but used he/him pronouns on social media. Law enforcement carried out an investigation at a home on Brightwood Avenue and has made contact with the shooter's father. Police also say they located a "manifesto" relating to the shooter's plans. Drake later said the manifesto “indicates that there was going to be shootings at multiple locations, the school was one of them. There was actually a map of the school detailing surveillance entry points and how this was going to be carried out on this day.”

The police identified the shooting victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney (ages 8 and 9), Cynthia Peak (age 61), Katherine Koonce (age 60) and Mike Hill (age 61). Koonce was the head of the Covenant School.

This story is developing and will update as more information becomes available.