The shooter who killed three third graders and three staff members at the Covenant School in Nashville two years ago acted alone in hopes of achieving infamy, a police investigation has concluded.
The investigation, a summary of which the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department released on Wednesday, found that the shooter, a former student at the private Christian school, had spent years carefully planning an attack. It also found that the shooter had hidden growing mental health struggles from relatives and therapists to ensure the attack succeeded.
The investigation absolved family members, therapists and those who sold guns to the 28-year-old shooter, whose legal name was Audrey Hale, of any culpability. The report noted that legally, there was little the shooter’s parents could do, given that the weapons were purchased and owned legally in a state with few restrictions.
In the aftermath of the school shooting, the worst in Tennessee’s history, there were months of protests calling for tighter gun laws. Gun rights groups, journalists and a Republican state lawmaker sued for the release of writings left by the shooter, something the families of the victims and most surviving students sought to stop.
Last July, a judge in Nashville refused to allow the publication of journals, art or video created by the shooter, though the judge ruled that any investigative findings could be released. Her ruling was appealed.
The absence of a clear motive or significant social media postings by the Nashville shooter inflamed rampant speculation that has not fully subsided. After police officials said that the shooter identified as transgender, right-wing activists intensified attacks on transgender people, claimed a connection between the shooting and the assailant’s gender identity without citing any evidence, and speculated about a conspiracy to cover up details about a killing at a Christian school.
The investigative summary referred to “numerous theories proposed by parties outside the investigation” about the shooter’s motive, adding, “Based on the available material, those theories can easily be debunked.”
In a statement shared by a lawyer on Wednesday, family members of those killed in the shooting and many parents of surviving students expressed concern that sharing details about the shooter and the crime would inspire copycat violence.
Some loved ones of victims and survivors of the attack said the report offered some finality that they hoped could put any lingering speculation to rest. It did nothing to resolve their grief.
“I don’t get to hold her, I don’t get to talk with her,” said Dick Koonce, whose wife, Katherine Koonce, was killed after confronting the shooter. “Charting out a new life is a weighted task.”
“To learn that it was motivated by self-advancement, notoriety, was angering,” he said. But, he added, “I have intentionally decided not to dedicate my emotion toward the person that brought this about, and just hold my wife and the other victims and the families of the school in greater focus.”
The investigation drew upon 16 notebooks that the shooter used as journals between 2017 and 2023; sketchbooks; Facebook and Instagram accounts; a series of video tapes; and available medical and psychological records.
“No single document, notebook, or digital device contains the answer,” the investigative summary stated, adding that the shooter had intentionally left a large volume of material.
Investigators interviewed the shooter’s parents and younger brother and people who attended firearms trainings with the shooter; they also reviewed how firearms retailers handled the criminal background checks when the shooter purchased weapons.
Having studied the two men behind the 1999 attack at Columbine High School and other mass shootings, the shooter made a deliberate calculation to target children, the summary said.
The shooter “recognized how school shootings were a topic that immediately gained society’s undivided attention and inherently shocked the conscience,” it said.
The choice to attack the Covenant School was not because the shooter had a negative experience as a student there, according to the summary. It was because it was “a personal connection to a place was necessary,” and the “beautiful, peaceful” school had “played an important role” in what was otherwise a fraught childhood.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville. More about Emily Cochrane
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