Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale may have been driven to kill by “resentment,” according to the city’s top cop.
Police have said Hale was a former student at The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school, where Hale slaughtered three 9-year-old students and three adults Monday morning before police closed in and killed her.
But they have yet to pinpoint a clear motive.
“There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school,” Police Chief John Drake told NBC News’ Lester Holt Monday evening. “Don’t have all the details to that just yet and that’s why this incident occurred.”
At an earlier press conference, Drake said Hale identified as transgender, though police referred to her as a woman.
It’s unclear whether Hale identified as a man or woman and investigators are looking into whether her identity played a role in the mass shooting.
A search of Hale’s Nashville home turned up a manifesto, as well as detailed maps of the school.
She was armed with two assault rifles and a handgun, cops said.
Hale’s mother, Norma Hale, worked as a coordinator at a local church and posted about religion frequently on Facebook.
She also gushed about her two children, Audrey and her brother Scott, regularly.
Drake said while Audrey targeted Covenant, “she targeted random students in the school … whoever she came in contact with, she fired rounds.”
The dead included 9-year-olds Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of the school’s pastor; Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kenney — and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.
Koonce was the academy’s headmistress.
