At least three children and three adults died in a Monday shooting at Covenant School, a Nashville, Tenn. Christian school, police said.
Metro Nashville Police Department spokesperson Dan Aaron initially said during a press conference Monday afternoon that the shooter, a woman, "appears to be in her teens" and wielded at least two "assault-type" rifles and a handgun. However, police later reported that the suspect "has now been identified as a 28-year-old Nashville woman." The woman was previously a student at the school, according to Nashville Police Chief John Drake.
Aaron also stated that the first distress calls came to the police department around 10:15 am local time.
"We now know that there are three students who were fatally wounded as well as three adults inside the school," Aaron said. "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."
The Metro Nashville Police Department tweeted at noon that it had encountered an active shooter at the school, informing the public that that shooter was dead and instructing parents on the location of "student reunification."
The Nashville Fire Department, as well as special agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Nashville Field Division and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation also responded to the unfolding situation.
The Covenant School was founded in 2001 as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church and enrolls children in preschool through sixth grade, according to its website,
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said in a tweet that he was "closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant" along with other law enforcement agencies.
"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," Lee wrote.
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White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press conference that President Biden had been briefed on the shooting.
"We need to do something," Jean-Pierre said. "Once again, the president calls on Congress to do something before another child is senselessly killed in a preventable act of gun violence. Again, we need to do something." First lady Jill Biden commented on the situation while at an event in Washington DC, saying, "We just learned about another shooting in Tennessee. A school shooting. And I am truly without words. Our children deserve better. And we stand, all of us, we stand with Nashville in prayer."
The shooting at Covenant School marks the 128th mass shooting in 2023 alone, per data from Gun Violence Archive, which designates a mass shooting to be one in which at least four people are shot, not counting the perpetrator.
In 2021, following a May shooting at Rigby Middle School in Idaho, The Associated Press reported on the uncommon phenomenon of women and girls carrying out school shootings. Data aggregated by The Violence Project — encompassing 146 cases of mass shootings dating back to the 1980s — shows that women and girls committed only 2% of mass shootings and school shootings in America. The AP's reporting also included other recent studies by the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, which indicated that most often, kids who plan or carry out school shootings are victims of bullying, have depression related to home life stress, and demonstrated concerning behavior. The studies also deduced that most attackers were male and an overwhelming majority were white, at 63 percent.
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