A 17-year-old male student armed with a pistol opened fire in a high school cafeteria in Nashville on Wednesday, fatally shooting a 16-year-old female student and injuring another student before killing himself, the police said.
Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department, said the student who had been injured was grazed in the arm by a bullet at Antioch High School, about 20 miles southeast of downtown Nashville, and was being treated at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. A male student was also being treated for what Mr. Aaron described as a facial injury from a fall.
The gunman fired multiple shots in the school’s cafeteria after 11 a.m., with an emergency call coming in two minutes after the first shot, Mr. Aaron said. He did not provide any additional details about the shooter or the victims.
At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Chief John Drake of the Nashville police said that the gunman took the bus to school on Wednesday morning, went into the restroom to retrieve his weapon and then went into the cafeteria. The motive for the shooting was still unclear, but the chief said that officials were reviewing the gunman’s online material. It was not clear if the shooting was targeted or not, Chief Drake said.
“As a city, as a community, it is impossibly difficult to be here once again, to be here dealing with devastation of gun violence,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
A student, who gave his name only as Ahmad, told the Nashville TV station WSMV that he was in the cafeteria when gunfire erupted. He and his friends hid behind garbage cans before they could make their way to the football field as they passed victims who had been shot and were bleeding on the ground.
“I wish I could save them,” he said. “I feel a lot of pain and grief and depression knowing that I can’t do a thing to help them, just seeing them get shot in front of my face like that.”
Antioch High School will be closed for the remainder of the week, school officials said.
Officials had set up a reunification area for parents.
“I join Tennesseans in praying for the victims, their families & the school community,” said Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, adding in a post on social media that he been briefed on the incident.
In Nashville, trauma still lingers from the 2023 shooting at the Covenant School, which was the deadliest school shooting in state history. A former student breached the campus of the private school, killing three 9-year-old students and three staff members before police shot and killed the assailant.
But even after thousands of protesters flooded the halls of the State Capitol, joining some parents of surviving students in pleas for tougher gun laws, the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly has balked at changing the laws.
“Schools should be safe spaces where children can learn and grow without fear of violence,” said Voices for a Safer Tennessee, an organization founded in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting to push for firearm restrictions, in a statement.
In 2024, over the objections of parents and many Democratic lawmakers in Nashville, lawmakers approved legislation that allowed teachers to carry a concealed handgun.
There has been support for increasing school resource officers: the Metro Council voted in December to approve a $3.9 million grant, though staffing shortages have prevented many of those schools from hiring officers. Mr. Aaron, the police spokesman, said that two student resource officers were on campus but not near the shooting when gunfire began. By the time they arrived, the shooting was over.
Charlane Oliver, a state senator who represents the district that includes Antioch High School, said in a statement that her heart was “broken over the devastating shooting.”
“As a mother and a representative of this community, I grieve with the families, students, and staff who are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” she said. “No child should ever feel unsafe in their school, and no family should face the anguish of such a senseless loss.”
In a statement, the White House said that President Trump was monitoring the shooting and offered “heartfelt thoughts and prayers to those impacted by this senseless tragedy and thank the brave first responders responding to the incident.”
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