Going to shoot schools, churches, supermarkets, cinemas or music festivals, in short, anywhere in the United States, is a man's thing.
This is what the statistics show. Starting the accounting in 1966, 98% of the mass shootings registered in this country are carried out by men, according to the calculation of The Violence Project, an organization without political affiliation that tracks the consequences of weapons in the US. In other counts it is indicated that , since 1982, only four of these tragedies were caused by women.
Perhaps Audrey Hale, 28, just wanted to show off her “manhood” when armed to the teeth with a pistol and two AR-15 semi-automatic military-style rifles on Monday, she headed to her former elementary school in Nashville, a private school linked to the Presbyterian Church, and opened fire.
He killed three nine-year-old children and as many adults, two 61-year-olds and one 60-year-old, Katherine Koonce, the head of the pedagogical institution that ranged from preschool (three or four years) to sixth grade (twelve years).
Shortly before starting his murderous action, Hale sent a gloomy message on Instagram to a friend from school days. "I plan to die today," she confessed to Averianna Patton. “This is not a joke,” she added. And there was another confession: “You will hear about me from the news after my death. This is my last goodbye, I love you, I will see you again in the next life. This sent him off just 16 minutes before the police received the first tip.
“We have a lot to live for,” Patton replied. “I'm sorry,” Hale replied, “I'm not trying to worry you or get your attention. I just need to die." He still explained that his family did not know anything about "what I am going to do." And he reiterated that "one more day would not make sense, I have left behind a lot of evidence, but something bad is going to happen."
Patton took that communication seriously, knowing that Hale had previously made such confessions to other colleagues. She contacted the suicide hotline and the county sheriff's office.
The police released this Tuesday the recording of the police operation in which it is seen how Hale fell under the bullets of the agents. The images are disturbing. Amidst the constant noise of alarms, it seems like it's a movie, but it's real. The policemen enter the school and are checking all the spaces, until they hear shots on the upper floor. Hale is before a large window, in a kind of atrium. The agents, who are heard calling "reload" and orders to deploy, fire non-stop as they approach her. “Suspect down,” she hears herself.
A woman by birth, as the chief of the metropolitan police of the city of Tennessee, John Drake, stressed, Hale died feeling like a man, always based on his descriptions on social networks.
The way in which Drake described the gunwoman as a "transgender woman" led to confusion and speculation, especially on the extreme right, which makes the issue of gender one of its ideological battles, implying that there was a mental illness in her, usual argument to forgive the weapons. She bought her weapons legally from local stores.
“Audrey Hale is a biological woman who uses masculine pronouns on her social media profile,” police spokesman Don Aaron clarified. On his LinkedIn, he modified his presentation a few months ago and declared himself a man.
“There are some theories about that,” Drake responded when asked if there was a link between the killing and that transgender identity. One of the possible explanations was his resentment for having attended a Christian school. The agents were analyzing a manifesto that he left written about his criminal action, which is supposed to address his gender identity and his dissatisfaction with life. In that document he included his plan to spread the killing by moving to other parts of the city.
Investigators found a huge amount of ammunition in his possession, from which they deduced that he intended to cause much more damage. She had maps of the school, with illustrations made by her as her graphic designer. He entered through a side door, as seen in the security video distributed by the police on Monday night, in which Hale is seen with a rifle in his hands and another dangling, moving to search for victims, between bursts of fire. shots.
Hale lived in her parents' home, about four miles from the Covenant School, on Burton Hills Boulevard, in an affluent suburb of Nashville. He trained in commercial illustration and design as seen in his post on the internet. She also worked on a children's book about an emotional support dog.
In her networks she presented herself as someone "with a binge on video games, a fan of watching movies and practicing sports." Hale attended Nossi College of Art, a small center in Nashville. She recently worked as a grocery buyer for a home delivery website.
On a now-deleted TikTok account linked to her, she posted a video of herself on a basketball court paying tribute to a deceased friend. “To Syd, I wish you were here,” she was saying.
His mother, Norma Fort Hale, is a church coordinator. “Get the guns out of the schools,” she said in a post on her Facebook page in 2012, after the Sandy Hook (Conneticut) school massacre, where 20 children were killed.
His daughter assured on the networks that "animals are my second passion, so I also enjoy my two cats." The first passion? The kids: “There's one inside of me that loves to run on the playground,” she remarked.
