What does the farewell message left by the author of the massacre in a US school say?

The author of the massacre yesterday at a school in NashvilleUnited States, who ended up with three children and three adults killed, sent a farewell message in which he warned that it was probably his last day of life, although he did not explain the reasons why he planned to open fire at his old school.

“This is basically a goodbye note. I hope to die today. You will probably hear from me after I die.” holds audrey hale in the note he left for his basketball partner, AVeriana Pattonat 9:57 in the morning, minutes before entering the school and opening fire. “This is my last goodbye, I love you. We will meet again in another life”Hale added, as reproduced by the Ansa news agency.

LOOK: What is known about Audrey Hale, the woman who killed three children and three adults in a school in the United States

The suspect, identified as audrey hale28 years old, from Nashvillehad a detailed map of the Covenant School and shot through a locked door to enter the building, before shooting dead three students and three staff membersaccording to the Department of Nashville Metropolitan Police.

“We have not yet been able to determine a motive. The investigation is still ongoing.” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief said today, john drakein an interview with ABC News

The murdered children were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 years old. The adults were the 61-year-old substitute teacher Cynthia Peakthe 61-year-old custodian Mike Hill and the school principal Katherine Konce, 60, according to police. The author of the shots, 28 years old and a former student of the institution, was killed by the police during the attack.

This video still image courtesy of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department shows Audrey Hale holding an assault rifle in the Covenant School building. (AFP). (-/)

“Yesterday was just a tragic event”Drake told ABC News. “I’ve done this job for 35 years and I prayed that this was never, ever a day we had to deal with,” he lamented.

The suspect was armed with at least two assault rifles, as well as a pistol. At least two of those guns were purchased legally.the police said. Investigators also searched the defendant’s house, where they seized “a sawn-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence,” according to a police press release.

The shooter was shot dead in the second-floor lobby of the school about 14 minutes after the first 911 call.

The Covenant School welcomes students from preschool to sixth grade. There are around 209 students and 40-50 staff members. Attacks on schools have become frequent in the United States, in part because of the ease of access to the gun market, despite several initiatives to precisely restrict the carrying of weapons.

Since January 1, they have been registered in USA 131 mass shootings and 4,245 died in these attacks, including 59 children under the age of 12, according to the NGO Gun Violence Archive (GVA). The number of people who have committed suicide with firearms since the beginning of the year has reached 5,742, according to the data, collected by the Sputnik agency.

A video capture shows Audrey Elizabeth Hale after being shot by police. (EFE). (METRO NASHVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT/)

Since the beginning of the year, 7,487 people have been injured by armed violence, including 129 children from 0 to 11 years old. According to GVA data, in 2022 there were a total of 647 mass shootings in the US.

Last month, President Joe Biden announced the allocation of 231 million dollars to the Department of Justice to combat gun violence and to prevent potential incidents. Shortly after, following a shooting that killed six in a southern state, the president said that gun violence was an epidemic in the country and urged Congress to take immediate action.

In 2012, a man killed 20 children aged 6 and 7 at a primary school in sandy hook, in Newtown, Connecticut, and 10 years later, in 2022, an 18-year-old killed 19 students and two teachers, this time at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. In 2018, a massacre at a high school in Parklandsin Florida, which left 17 dead and 14 injured, sparked a national movement, led by youth, to demand stricter gun supervision in the country.

Despite the mobilization of more than a million protesters, Congress did not adopt an ambitious law because many congressmen appear heavily influenced by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a gun lobby group.

Several children leave the reunification center at Woodmont Baptist Church after a shooting at a Nashville school on March 27, 2023. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Gender

At first, the police did not give clear information about the sex of the shooter, who according to the agents was fatally shot by two officers who came to the school. For hours, she was identified as a 28-year-old woman and eventually as Audrey Hale.

But then, at a press conference late yesterday afternoon, the police chief said that Hale was transgender, though she declined to elaborate on how Hale identified at the time. The New York Post posted this morning that the assailant identified herself as male.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Hale preferred to use the pronoun “he” to identify himself.and sources close to his family told The Daily Beast that Hale had autism and “recently announced that she was transgender.”

The Instagram profile of halewhich has already been deleted, used the name Aiden.

The police chief of Nashville indicated that his agents they are investigating whether gender was a motive for the assailant to carry out the school shooting.

“There are some theories about it.Or, we’re looking into all the leads,” Drake said, adding that investigators could link gender to her resentment of having attended that religious institute as a child.

The fact that the attacker was a woman surprised the experts. Women only make up 5-8% of all assailants in mass shootingssaid Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminal justice professor who has studied the psychology and behavior of mass murderers in depth.

Only four of the 191 mass shootings since 1966 cataloged by The Violence Project, a non-profit research center, they were perpetrated by a woman.

The researchers believe that there three main explanations why men commit more shootings than women, according to Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University who has studied mass shootings for more than a decade.

Metzl noted that those explanations are that men have more testosterone, are socialized to engage in violent acts, and own more guns than women.

“There’s a story here that we don’t know about,” Metzl said of the suspect in the Nashville shooting. “Based on previous school shootings, very often we think that people have a historical relationship or an emotional relationship with the school”.

Monday’s tragedy unfolded in about 14 minutes. Police received the initial report of an active shooting at approximately 10:13 a.m. today.

Police officers began clearing the first floor of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference.

Two police officers from a five-member team fired in response, killing the suspect at around 10:27 a.m.Aaron added. There were no police officers present at or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting, since it is a church-operated school, he said.

The victims of The Covenant School They were pronounced dead on arrival at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Source: Elcomercio