A 17-year-old male student armed with a gun opened fire in a Nashville high school cafeteria Wednesday, shooting and killing a 16-year-old female student and wounding a male student before killing himself, police said.
Don Aaron, spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said a male student was wounded in the arm by a bullet at Antioch High School, about 20 miles southeast of downtown Nashville, and was being treated at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. . Another male student was also being treated by Mr. Aaron as a facial injury from a fall.
The gunman, Solomon Henderson, fired multiple shots into the school cafeteria just after 11 a.m., before shooting himself in the head, police said. The 16-year-old girl who was killed was Josselin Corea Escalante, police said.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Nashville Police Chief John Drake said the gunman took the bus to school Wednesday morning, went into a restroom to retrieve his weapon, and then entered a restaurant. The cause of the incident was not yet clear, but the chief said officials were investigating the gunman’s story online. It is not clear whether the shooting was intentional or not, Chief Drake said.
“As a city, as a community, it’s very difficult to be here again, to be here dealing with gun violence,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
The student, who gave his name only as Ahmad, told Nashville television station WSMV that he was in the restaurant when the shots rang out. He and his friends hid behind trash cans before entering the football field as they passed gunshot victims and bleeding on the ground.
“I wish I could save them,” he said. “I feel great pain, sorrow and depression knowing that there is nothing I can do to help them, I just see them being shot in front of my face like that.”
Antioch High School will be closed for the rest of the week, school officials said.
Officials had set up a meeting place for parents.
“I join Tennesseans in praying for the victims, their families and the school community,” said Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, added in a post on social media that he was informed of the incident.
In Nashville, the trauma of the 2023 shooting at Covenant School, which was the worst school shooting in state history, continues. A former student broke into a private school, killing three 9-year-old students and three staff members before police shot and killed the attacker.
But even after thousands of protesters filled the halls of the State Capitol, joining other parents of student survivors in calling for stricter gun laws, Republican officials in the Tennessee General Assembly refused to change the laws.
“Schools should be safe places where children can learn and grow without fear of violence,” Voices for a Safer Tennessee, an organization formed after the Covenant School shooting to push for gun restrictions, said in a statement.
In 2024, over opposition from parents and many Democratic lawmakers in Nashville, lawmakers passed a law allowing teachers to carry concealed handguns.
There has been support for increasing school resource officers: The City Council voted in December to approve $3.9 million in funding, though staffing shortages have prevented many of those schools from hiring officers. Mr. Aaron, the police spokesperson, said two police officers who were teaching students were at the station but not near where the shots were fired. By the time they arrived, the shooting was over.
Charlane Oliver, a state senator who represents the district that includes Antioch High School, said in a statement that she was “heartbroken by this shooting.”
“As a mother and representative of this community, I am saddened with the families, students and staff who are suffering from this unimaginable massacre,” he said. “No child should feel unsafe at school, and no family should have to deal with the grief of such a senseless loss.”
In a statement, the White House said President Trump was monitoring the incident and offered “heartfelt thoughts and prayers to those affected by this senseless tragedy and thanked the brave first responders who responded to this incident.”
Hank Sanders reporting contributed.
Source link
