Female ex-student identified as Christian school shooter as six victims named

All six victims of the Nashville Christian school shooting have been named including head of school Katherine Koonce (right) (Pictures: AP)

A female shooter who killed six at a Christian school has been identified as a former student there, and the names of the victims aged nine to 61 have been released.

The 28-year-old shooter identified as Audrey Hale was ‘at one point a student’ at The Covenant School where a massacre broke out on Monday morning, said Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake. But it was not immediately clear when she attended the school.

Hale, of Nashville, identified as transgender, Drake added.

Police identified the six victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 years old; head of the school Katherine Koonce, 60; substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61; and custodian Mike Hill, 61.

A group prays with a child outside the reunification center at the Woodmont Baptist church after a school shooting (Picture: AP)

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake speaks to the media following a mass shooting at The Covenant School (Picture: AP)

Hale was armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun and entered the school building by shooting her way through a side door, Drake said. She opened fire on the first floor and continued up to the second floor, before police gunned her down.

Investigators found that Hale had detailed maps of the school and reviewed a manifesto of sorts and other writings, Drake said. Authorities have communicated with her father and are gathering evidence at her home.

The private school, which is part of the Covenant Presbyterian Church, serves roughly 200 students from preschool to 6th grade, its website states.

At least two of the weapons Hale used in the assault appeared to be bought legally in the Nashville region, according to Drake.

Children from The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, hold hands as they are taken to a reunification site at the Woodmont Baptist Church (Picture: AP)

An ambulance leaves The Covenant School in Nashville after a mass shooting on Monday (Picture: AP)

President Joe Biden called the massacre ‘sick’ and urged Congress to enact more gun control legislation.

The Nashville massacre was 129th mass shooting in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The nation surpassed 100 mass shootings on March 5, a rate that is faster than any other year in the last decade.

Mass shootings by women are rare. There have been four female assailants in the US since 1966, compared to 168 by males, according to the Violence Project. In two of the cases, females acted alongside males.

‘While there have been women and girls who have fired guns at school, this is the first female school shooter to kill four or more people,’ Violence Project co-founder Jillian Peterson told The New York Times.

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