Audrey Hale legally purchased seven weapons from five local stores, Police Chief John Drake said. “Her parents felt like that she should not own weapons,” the chief added.
The former Christian school student who gunned down six people, including three children, hid weapons in the family home, unbeknownst to the shooter’s parents who didn’t want their troubled child to be armed, Nashville police said Tuesday.
Audrey Hale, 28, legally purchased seven weapons from five local stores, and sold one of those firearms, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters.
Hale had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder,” the chief said.
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“Her parents felt like that she should not own weapons. They were under the impression that when she sold the one weapon, that she did not own anymore,” Drake told reporters. “As it turned out, she had been hiding several weapons within the house.”
Three of those weapons were used in Monday’s attack at The Covenant School, where Hale was once a student, authorities said.
There’s no immediate proof that Hale was intending to kill specific people on that campus, police said.
“We have no evidence that individuals were specifically targeted. This school, this church building was a target of the shooter,” Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron.
“But we have no information at present to indicate the shooter was specifically targeting any one of the six individuals who were murdered.”
Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of The Covenant School, was fatally shot in a hallway, police said.
“She (Koonce) was in the hallway by herself,” Drake said. “There was a confrontation … you can tell the way she was lying in the hallway.”
Moments later, Drake walked back his use of the word “confrontation” to describe how Hale and Koonce met in that school corridor.
“I can’t say it was a ‘confrontation’ but she (Hale) met the head person (Koonce) in the hallway,” the chief explained.
Custodian Mike Hill, 61, was killed when the heavily armed Hale blasted through the glass of a locked door to come into the school.
“She shot through the door to enter. She sprayed rounds through the glass, striking him. You can see where he came to rest,” Drake said. “As far as the others, they were just spread out in different locations.”
The three children killed were Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9. Substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, was also killed.