The shooting has left Tennessee's capital city once again grappling with the fallout of a tragic school shooting. Nearly two years prior, a shooter opened fire at a private elementary school in Nashville and killed six people, including three children.
Following Wednesday’s shooting, a 41-page document posted on social media accounts that anti-hate analysts believe belonged to Henderson has emerged. The writings include racist and extremist ideology, as well as a discussion of plans for the shooting.
The document is filled with calls for violence and racist comments, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies, expressions of shame that he was Black and praise for specific people who carried out well-known shootings.
The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism issued an analysis of the document and saying it appears to be authentic. The analysis came after cross-referencing its content with social media sites believed to be his, said Carla Hill, the center’s senior director of investigative research.
Jared Holt, a Senior Research Analyst at Institute for Strategic Dialogue who focuses on hate and extremism in the U.S., said it’s not unheard of for white supremacist movements to attract people of color.
“At least in in my experience, this is probably the most extreme case of this I’ve seen today,” said Holt, who also analyzed the document and believes it to be Henderson’s.
A Nashville police spokesperson on Thursday did not immediately return a request to confirm that police are investigating the 41-page document.
“We believe there are some materials out there, and if maybe they were seen, and said something, maybe more could have been done,” Nashville Police chief John Drake said Wednesday.
The immediate circulation of Henderson's purported writings comes in stark contrast to the lengthy legal challenges surrounding the 2023 Covenant School shooting. A request for police to release that gunman's private writings became a complex fight that pitted the parents of traumatized students against a coalition of local news outlets, nonprofits and a Republican lawmaker. A Tennessee judge last year sided with the parents and ruled the shooter's writing cannot be released. The legal battle remains ongoing.
Investigators have not yet established a connection between Henderson and the victims, and police said the gunfire may have been random, according to a statement.
A student who was grazed by a bullet Wednesday was treated and released from the hospital. Another student was taken to a hospital for treatment of a facial injury that happened during a fall.
Nashville schools officials have faced questions about why new technology that uses a school’s cameras and AI capabilities to detect weapons didn’t trigger a warning on Wednesday. The lack of metal detectors has also been brought into focus, and while Superintendent Adrienne Battle has said there are pros and cons to metal detectors, she said nothing is off the table.
“Based on the shooter’s location and proximity to the cameras, it wasn’t close enough to get an accurate read and to activate that alarm,” Sean Braisted, chief of communications and technology for Metro Nashville Public Schools, said at a news conference Thursday. He said the system was activated when police took out their guns Wednesday.
In October, a 16-year-old Antioch High School student was arrested after school resource officers and school officials discovered through social media that he had taken a gun to school the day prior. When he was stopped the following morning, officials found a loaded gun in his pants, police said.
And just hours after the Antioch shooting, an 18-year-old student at another Nashville school, McGavock High School, was arrested Wednesday for having a handgun in his backpack while playing basketball in the gym after school, police said. The student said the gun didn’t belong to him and he didn’t know it was in his backpack.
GOP lawmakers in the Republican-dominant state have long refused to consider taking up gun control measures, even after a wave of demonstrations and requests from families and advocates following the Covenant shooting. With the Republican supermajority intact after November’s election, it’s unlikely attitudes have changed enough to consider any meaningful bills that would address gun control.
Instead, lawmakers have been more open to adding more security to schools — including passing a bill last year that would allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds, and bar parents and other teachers from knowing who was armed.
Antioch, a growing and diverse area about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of downtown Nashville, has endured other prominent shootings in recent years. A 2017 fatal shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ killed one woman and wounded seven people. And in 2018, a shooter killed four people at a Waffle House.
___
Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Credit: AP