Three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville, in the US, on Monday, hospital officials said. The suspect is also dead after a confrontation with police.
All had gunshot wounds, officials said. They were pronounced dead on arrival at the Monroe Carell Junior Children’s Hospital.
It was not clear whether anyone else was wounded in the attack. Other students walked to safety on Monday, holding hands as they left their school surrounded by police cars, to a nearby church to be reunited with their parents.
The gunman also died after being “engaged by” officers, Metro Nashville Police said in a Twitter post. It was not clear whether the gunman died by suicide or was shot by police. The fire department said it responded to an “active aggressor” but did not give any specifics.
On WTVF TV, reporter Hannah McDonald said that her mother-in-law works at the front desk at The Covenant School. The woman had stepped outside for a break and was coming back when she heard gunshots, McDonald said during a live broadcast.
The reporter said she has not been able to speak to her mother-in-law but said her husband had. The Covenant School was founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church in 2001, according to the school’s website.
The school is in the affluent Green Hill neighbourhood just south of central Nashville, Tennessee, close to the city’s top universities and home to the famed Bluebird Cafe – a beloved spot for musicians and songwriters. The school has 33 teachers, the website said. The school’s website features the motto Shepherding Hearts, Empowering Minds, Celebrating Childhood.
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The killings come as communities around the US reel from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at a primary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year, a pupil who shot his teacher in Virginia, and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators. Police with rifles, heavy vests and helmets could be seen walking through the school car park and around the grassy perimeter of the building.
Helicopter footage from WTVF also showed the officers looking around a wooded area between the campus and a nearby road. Jozen Reodica heard the police sirens and fire engines blaring from outside her office building nearby. As her building was placed under lockdown, she took out her phone and recorded the chaos.“I thought I would just see this on TV,” she said. “And right now, it’s real.”
