The shooter who opened fire earlier today at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian elementary school in Nashville, has been identified as a 28-year-old transgender former student.
The shooter, whose name or picture we will not publish, killed three young children and three faculty members before being shot dead by law enforcement who responded within minutes.
"At one point [the shooter] was a student at that school," Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters. [The shooter] identifies as transgender."
Incredibly, the biological sex of the killer is still not 100% clear, though it seems at this time that the shooter was a female who identified as a transgender male.
Fox also reports that the school principal was one of the victims.
The victims have been identified as:
- Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9
- Hallie Scruggs, 9
- William Kinney, 9
- Cynthia Peak, 61
- Katherine Koonce, 60
- Mike Hill, 61
The shooter reportedly "carefully planned the attack with detailed maps and surveillance" and left some sort of manifesto.
When asked about a possible motive, the police chief said, "There's right now a theory that we may be able to talk about later but it's not confirmed." When asked specifically if the shooter's transgender identity could have factored into the killer's motive, he said, "There is some theory to that, we're investigating all the leads."
Social media sites scrubbed the shooter's past info before law enforcement announcements were made.
Police have been searching the home apparently owned by the shooter's father in Nashville, where he apparently still resided. We will not post the address, but the home is in a nice neighborhood and has a Zillow value estimate of $805,300.
