Nashville shooting leaves 6 dead

Kate Verity

Contributing Writer

Monday, March 27, was a dark day in Nashville, Tennessee.

At 10:10 a.m., 28-yearold Audrey Hale forcefully entered The Covenant School by shooting through the glass doors of a locked side entrance.

Hale entered the school carrying two assault weapons and a pistol, intent on wreaking havoc.

By 10:13 in the morning, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department received a call that there were shots fired at

The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school. By 10:24, officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo had taken down the assailant.

Police have been unable to identify if Hale was targeting any specific people in the attack. So far, it appears to have been a generalized attack on the whole school.

Six people were killed in this tragic event. Three of the victims were nineyear-old students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs. The other three individuals who lost their lives have been identified as

61-year-old custodian

Mike Hill, 61-year-old substitute teacher Cynthia Peak and the 60-yearold head of the school, Katherine Koonce.

Brinkley Bolton, a sophomore chemistry major, hopes to work in forensics one day. Hearing about the events in Nashville saddened her, but she prefers to focus on the heroic response of the officers who responded so quickly.

“It made me sad, but I’m also very happy that the cops took her [Hale] down in 14 minutes,” Bolton said. “People think 14 minutes is a long time, but the 14 minutes is from when someone dialed 911, got Nashville Metro P.D. They got in there, did not stop, and they shot her down. And that was all in 14 minutes, whereas compared to Uvalde — that took a lot more time.”

The New York Times published an article on April 5 titled “U.S. Mass Shootings in 2023: A Partial List.” This article said that, as of late March, a nonprofit research group called The Gun Violence Archive has counted 130 mass shootings in the United States in 2023.

“There is no consen-