NASHVILLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL-Three children and three adults were killed by a female shooter who carried two assault-style rifles and a pistol into an elementary school in Nashville on Monday, police said.
Officers shot and killed the attacker at Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian church in the Tennessee state capital. The Nashville police chief said “initial findings” were that the woman was a former student at the school.
Lamenting the “heartbreaking” attack, Joe Biden reiterated his call for Congress to pass meaningful gun control reform including an assault weapons ban.
“We have to do more to stop gun violence ripping our communities apart,” the president said at the White House. “It’s ripping the soul from this nation.”
Authorities did not immediately name the shooter or the victims. Speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon, the Nashville police chief, John Drake, said the victims had been identified and their families told.
Drake also said the 28-year-old suspect had been identified and was from Nashville. Asked if the woman was wearing body armour, he declined to say for certain.
Don Aaron, a police spokesperson, told reporters the first call about the shooting came at 9.30am. The shooter, who Aaron first said “appeared to be in her teens … entered the school through a side entrance and traversed her way from the first floor to the second floor, firing multiple shots”.
Aaron said the shooting happened in a “lobby-type area” and “not in a classroom per se”. The shooter was dead by 10.27am, he said, after being engaged by two of five officers. An officer was wounded from cut glass, Aaron said. No other injuries were reported.
Drake was asked if the side entrance to the school had been locked.
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