A community remembers

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next, with the news of yesterday’s Catholic school shooting many of us may think back to another shooting that happened at a religious school.

On March 27th, 2023, a former student broke through the locked glass doors of The Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter killed three staff members and three students before being shot by police.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: WORLD’s Kim Henderson travelled to Nashville after the shooting to cover the story for us and she’s with us now to reflect on her experiences…Good morning Kim.

KIM HENDERSON: Good morning.

BROWN: Well shortly after the 2023 shooting in Nashville you visited the site…what was that like?

HENDERSON: I remember being struck by the huge media presence outside the school, all the TV trucks and the satellites and, you know, personalities presenting live from that site. And in contrast to that, you had a local element too. You had streams of people from the community coming through and laying down objects at the entrance, you know, stuffed animals, notes, photos. I remember a pizza box with a note written on it. A lot of things that showed, just were evidence of a great loss for that community. And then the next day, I visited a florist that was located near the school. I learned from that business owner that the volume of orders they had had on the Tuesday, the day after the shooting, had actually shut down that store's website. It showed how people all over the country were saddened by this tragedy that had happened in Nashville.

BROWN: Just looking at photographs of the scene and seeing the footage. I’m sure the events in Minnesota yesterday have brought up a lot of painful memories for the families and staff at The Covenant School. We reached out to them for comment and understandably they declined to speak with us…but that’s pretty much been their position since the tragedy unfolded two years ago isn’t it…

HENDERSON: That's right, they've been very closed off and some would say wisely closed off. Covenant had a public relations firm in place by the time I landed in Nashville the day after the shooting and Covenant parents since then have been totally committed to not giving the shooter any notoriety. That's been very important to them.

BROWN: Even though you weren’t able to talk with any or many families after the shooting, you read through the many declaration statements. Talk to us a little bit about what you learned from the court documents, specifically how the shooting affected the children of the school.

HENDERSON: Yeah, those were really hard to get through some of those declarations by the parents. Those were for Chancery Court hearings and they mentioned that their children could no longer sleep well or sleep alone. They had seen some of their kids start to plan ways of escape whenever they entered buildings. And one father noted that his son froze up during a baseball game when he was batting because he heard a car backfire and he thought that was gun shots. And another parent mentioned when it was time for them to go back to school that her children had to be pried out of their van and that sounded really terrible.

BROWN: So sad. You spoke with a counselor a couple of days after the shooting. What did she say about how adults can help kids after surviving such a devastating attack?

HENDERSON: Yes, that was Sissy Goff with Daystar Counseling and she was actually on site during the hours after the shooting, handling some of the responsibilities as parents were reunited with their children. And one of the things she told them then was to let the children take the lead in asking questions and giving and be sure to give them space to feel their feelings. And her group continued to meet with children. In the weeks after that, and I was there later that week at her counseling site, and saw children from covenant with their families coming in to talk with counselors there at Daystar.

BROWN: A number of neighboring churches hosted prayer vigils last night near the Annunciation Catholic School site in Minneapolis. You attended a prayer vigil after the Nashville shooting…tell us about that service and perhaps reflect on why these sorts of gatherings are good for a community?

HENDERSON: Well, the week following the covenant shooting, there were several well-publicized prayer meetings, and Jill Biden even came to town for one of those prayer vigils. And I was in a Christian bookstore and happened to learn that there was going to be a Wednesday night prayer service at the Village Church. And that was where the shooters' parents actually were members. And I decided to go to that gathering and it was a very somber time for that congregation. But the message there was grounded in truth, it was grounded in the gospel, and really that's the only hope that anyone has to cling to during a tragedy like this.

BROWN: The way that you recall all of those details with such clarity, this is just not something that you ever forget, is it?

HENDERSON: It's not, it was just such a sad time and you know, you go there to report a story and it's just hard to know what is proper to report and something like that.

BROWN: Kim Henderson is senior writer with WORLD. We’ll include a link to her 2023 story from Nashville in today’s transcript.

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