- Title: Children flee scene holding hands after school shooting in Tennessee
- Date: 27th March 2023
- Summary: NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, UNITED STATES (MARCH 27, 2023) (REUTERS) CHILDREN GETTING OFF THE BUS AND HUGGING RELATIVES WOODMONT BAPTIST CHURCH BUS SIGN OF WOODMONT BAPTIST CHURCH, WHERE CHILDREN WERE TAKEN FOLLOWING THE SHOOTING TO REUNITE WITH RELATIVES POLICE VEHICLES AT THE SCENE
- Embargoed: 10th April 2023 22:08
- Keywords: Christian school Covenant School Nashville United States children gun control guns school shooting weapons
- Location: NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, UNITED STATES
- City: NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, UNITED STATES
- Country: US
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,North America
- Reuters ID: LVA002072927032023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: An eyewitness captured on Monday (March 27) a row of children holding hands while fleeing the scene of a mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville.
A 28-year-old woman armed with several guns opened fire earlier on Monday at the school she once attended in Tennessee's capital city, killing three children and three adult staffers before police killed her, authorities said.
There was no immediate official word on a possible motive for the gun violence, which unfolded on a warm spring morning not long after classes began at The Covenant School, whose students consist mostly of elementary school-age children.
The woman was carrying at least two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, police said.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department began receiving calls at 10:13 a.m. of a shooter at the school, and arriving officers reported hearing gunfire coming from the building's second floor, police spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters.
Two officers from a five-member team shot the assailant in a lobby area, and she was pronounced dead by 10:27 a.m.
Deadly mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States in recent years, but a female attacker is highly unusual. Only four of 191 mass shootings cataloged since 1966 by The Violence Project, a nonprofit research center, were carried out by a female attacker.
Police Chief John Drake later described the suspect as a 28-year-old woman from the Nashville area who "at one point was a student at this school." But her identity was not immediately made public.
Three students were pronounced dead after arriving at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt with gunshot wounds, John Howser, a hospital spokesperson, said in a statement. Three adult staff members were killed by the shooter, police said.
Students' parents were told to gather at the nearby Woodmont Baptist Church to be reunited with their children. Parents trickled out of the building with their youngsters in tow.
The Covenant School, founded in 2001, is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville with about 200 students, according to the school's website. The school serves preschool through sixth graders and held an active shooter training program in 2022, WTVF-TV reported.
There have been 89 school shootings – defined as anytime a gun is discharged on school property – in the U.S. so far in 2023, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website founded by researcher David Riedman. Last year saw 303 such incidents, the highest of any year in the database, which goes back to 1970.
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