Federal and local investigators in Nashville were working on Tuesday to piece together clues about the actions and motives of the shooter who killed three students and three adults at a private school before being shot dead by the police.
The assailant who opened fire at the Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday was identified by officials as Audrey E. Hale, a 28-year-old former student who lived in the area.
The Nashville police chief, John Drake, said on Tuesday that they had determined that the shooter had legally purchased the three firearms used on Monday. Chief Drake said that the shooter had bought seven firearms in all, and had sold one of them.
Chief Drake said that the assailant had been under doctor’s care for an “emotional disorder,” and that the family believed the assailant should not have owned any firearms.
He added that the assailant had sold one of the seven guns, and that the shooter’s parents had been under the impression that there were no firearms remaining in the house. Chief Drake said the shooter hid the other firearms around the house.
Chief Drake reiterated on Tuesday that the attack was targeted, rather than random, but that it was too early to discuss a possible motive. Local and federal investigators working on the case were reviewing writings and had made contact with the shooter’s father, Chief Drake said.
A six-minute compilation of body camera footage released by the police department on Tuesday shows how police officers raced through the school, past children’s artwork hanging on the walls, searching classrooms and bathrooms before killing the shooter.
The school, called the Covenant School, is in the wealthy Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, a few miles south of downtown, and enrolls about 200 students in preschool through sixth grade. The attack on Monday was the 13th school shooting in the United States this year that resulted in injury or death, according to Education Week.
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