Audrey Hale on Monday joined several other shooters who attacked staff and students of their former school. A student of Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, Hale was a graphic designer who used to design logos for businesses.
The 28-year-old entered the premises of the private school, firing open the lock of the side entrance, armed with three guns and gunned down six people, including three children.
Audrey, who identifies as a man and uses pronouns he/him, was born a biological female. People speaking to news outlet Daily Beast said that she was a quiet student, autistic but highly functional.
Audrey, however, is not the only former student to go on a killing spree, targeting their alma mater. In 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered his former school, Robb Elementary School, and killed nineteen children and two adults in Uvalde County on May 24.
Ramos, like Audrey, was shot down by security officials who were part of a Border Patrol tactical team.
The Sandy Hook School shooting, which is the fourth deadliest mass shooting in the world, was also perpetrated by a former student, Adam Lanza.
Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012 and killed 26 people, of which 20 were children aged below seven years. However, whether Lanza was a former student at Sandy Hook or not remains subject of debate, with only one former classmate, Janet Robinson, telling USA Today that Lanza attended Sandy Hook till 2002.
The 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida’s Parkland was also perpetrated by a former student, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz. He killed 17 and injured 17 others and was later arrested by the police. Of 17 dead, 14 were students and three were school staff.
The 2015 Red Lake Shootings is another incident where a former student went to their alma mater and killed school students and children. A 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine people and injured seven others in Red Lake Senior High School. One among those dead was Wiese’s grandfather.
The 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting is another case where 20-year-old Eric Houston shot and killed four people, of which three were students and one was his former teacher.
US-based Everytown for Gun Safety who works to spread awareness, understanding of the causes of gun violence and the means to reduce it in a report from 2022 said 60% of school-age shooters were current or former students, including all shooters involved in mass shootings and nearly all in self-harm incidents.
They pointed out law enforcement officials do not immediately discharge such information in the aftermath of such incidents.
Another analysis conducted by the group based on the New York City Police Department’s review of active shooter incidents in K-12 schools between 1966 and 2016 revealed that in 75% of these incidents, the perpetrator or perpetrators were current or former students of the school, who were of school-age.
A separate analysis funded by the National Institute of Justice found that in the 20-year period from 1999 to 2019, which included six mass school shootings and 39 attempted mass school shootings, over 90% of the shooters were current or former students of the school.
(with inputs from USA Today, Texas Tribune and Everytown)
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