Nashville Police Say Covenant School Shooter Had Initially Planned To Target A Different School, But Didn’t Want To Be Viewed As Racist

Pure evil.

It’s been over two years now since the horrific mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville that killed six people, including three 9-years old students at the private Christian school as well as three staff members.

The shooter was identified as 28-year old Audrey Hale, a former student of the school who identified as a transgender male  and had started going by the name Aiden.

Obviously the revelation that the perpetrator was transgender sparked a lot of debate, and early on in the investigation the police revealed that Hale had left behind writings that explained her motivation for the shooting.

Transgender advocates worried that the release of the writings would lead to attacks on the trans community, while many demanded that the manifesto be released in the interest of transparency. Ultimately, a court blocked the release of the documents, though back in 2023 some of her writings were leaked and revealed some of her motivation for the shooting.

In the rantings, Hale calls her victims “crackers” who go to “fancy private schools with those fancy khakis & sports backpacks.” She also said she wanted to “kill all you little crackers,” calling her victims a “bunch of little fa**ots” with “white privilege.”

And though we still haven’t seen the full writings, the Metro Nashville Police Department released their final report on the shooting today and gives us an even closer look into Hale’s motivations for the horrific attack.

The 48-page report describes Hale’s “manifesto” not as a single document but as a lengthy series of writings that had to be analyzed to piece together the shooter’s motives:

“What did exist were a series of notebooks, art composition books, and media files created by Hale documenting her planning and preparation for the attack, the events in her life that motivated her to commit the attack, and her hopes regarding the outcome of the attack.

No single document, notebook, or digital device contains the answer to those questions. The answer is scattered throughout all the assembled material, which required a careful review of the material to understand Hale’s motive.”

And it also revealed that her plans to commit a school shooting started as far back as 2017, and in 2018 she began planning an attack at Creswell Middle School, a private school located in north Nashville.

Hale reportedly drew a map of the layout of the school and outlined how she planned to move throughout the building during her attack. And she also devised a plan to get into the school undetected, knowing that there was security located at the entrances.

But in March 2020, Hale began to express doubts about targeting Creswell Middle School, which has around a 90% minority population – because she didn’t want to be viewed as a racist after she was gone:

“Though she had no qualms about killing anyone regardless of specific demographical categories, she worried she might be branded as a racist, which would remove her ability to give the motive and reasoning for the attack and allow others to choose it for her once she was dead.”

Ultimately, the shooter changed her target to the Covenant School, which she explained was more geographically isolated and would give her more time to kill. And she also believed that choosing a Christian school would give the attack more notoriety:

“The age of the children and the school being considered a Christian school made her recognize the instant notoriety the attack would bring.”

Absolutely chilling how much thought she put into this evil attack.

The report says that Hale didn’t care who she killed during the shooting, and that she had no personal history with any of her victims:

“It had to provide a sense of infamy so great, it led to her being easily remembered.”

Police also revealed that while Hale identified as male, nothing was found in her medical records to show that she had undergone gender transition surgery, and was biologically female at the time of her death.

The whole report is a horrifying look into the evil in her mind and heart when she carried out such a horrific attack. And unfortunately, there’s nothing it can reveal that would make the senseless act any less painful for those affected.