Covenant shooter sought notoriety, final police report says

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department on Wednesday released its final report on the Covenant School shooting wrapping up more than two years of investigation. The 48-page report concluded that the shooter’s goal was to die while achieving notoriety. She was fascinated with previous shootings like the one at Columbine High School in 1999. She planned to kill at least 40 people, mainly children, to ensure she was remembered. She acknowledged in her writings that the children were innocent, and did not evaluate any demographic factor other than age when choosing her victims.

The Covenant School shooter’s much-hyped manifesto did not exist as such, according to the report. Instead, years of scattered writings in notebooks, thumb drives, and devices allowed investigators to piece together her history and motivations. The shooter documented her life and actions far more than any previous school shooter, investigators found.

On March 27, 2023, the shooter forcibly entered the Covenant School grounds, where she shot and killed three nine-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. She also killed three school personnel: Cynthia Peak, Katherine Koonce, and Mike Hill. Law enforcement shot and killed her about 24 minutes after she broke into the school, stopping her attack.

The shooter identified as a male and used male pronouns at the time of her death. The report referred to her as a female in compliance with Tennessee law.

What are some key takeaways from the report?

• The Covenant School shooter had a troubled mental health history, which included several suicide attempts, depression, and extreme loneliness. Her parents took her to several therapists and psychiatrists. She left behind many long, expletive-filled, and often homicidal rants about viewpoints she disagreed with. The report said the shooter wrote that these rants were not to be taken literally, writing that she was only blowing off steam.

• The shooter didn’t hate Covenant School. She wrote that her years as a Covenant student from kindergarten to fourth grade were some of the happiest she had known. She began to feel bullied and isolated after transferring to local schools.

• She planned and abandoned several attacks on other schools she attended before deciding that Covenant best suited her aims.

• She had planned to kill her parents if they discovered her plans and tried to report her.

• She spent two years meticulously planning out the Covenant shooting, gathering information from a tour the school granted her in 2021 and studying previous school shootings.

• The shooter purchased all of her firearms legally from licensed dealers.

• Law enforcement officers had difficulty finding and stopping the shooter during the attack due to unfamiliarity with the school’s meandering layout. The building’s floor plan and loud fire alarm also hindered school administrators from hearing or seeing her, leaving many unaware of the attack for several minutes.

• No one living is criminally responsible for the attack, according to the report. The case is now closed.

What did the Covenant parents say about the report? Stefan Banks, a parent of two Covenant students, said during a Wednesday press conference that the report vindicates the parents’ legal battle to block the release of the shooter’s documents. Making her writings public would fulfill the shooter’s wish for notoriety, he said, according to local news.

Dig deeper: Read Kim Henderson’s feature story on the Covenant parents’ fight to keep the shooter’s writings out of the public eye.