Six people have been killed in a shooting by an ex student at a school in the US City of Nashville Tennessee.
The private Christian school has about 200 students.
Police said the suspect was 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who identified as transgender.
The suspect drove to the school in a Honda Fit and got in by firing through one of the school doors, which were all locked.
Video later released by Nashville police show Hale using a gun to gain entry by shattering glass panes on the front doors, then wandering the school’s deserted corridors – at one point walking past a room labelled “Children’s Ministry”.
Hale was armed with three guns, including a semi-automatic rifle, and was shot dead by police.
A search of a nearby parked car led officers to “firmly believe” that Hale was a former student of the school, said police.
Police spoke with the attacker’s father during a search of a nearby home that was listed as the shooter’s address.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake said investigators there found a manifesto and “a map of how all of this was going to play out”, including entry and exit points at the school building.
In a statement, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said the city had “joined the dreaded, long list of communities to experience a school shooting”.
President Joe Biden called the shooting a “family’s worst nightmare”.
“We have to do more to stop gun violence,” he said, once again calling on Congress to pass gun control laws. “It is ripping our communities apart, and ripping at the very soul of this nation.”
The attack was America’s 129th mass shooting of 2023, according to Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit that tracks gun violence data.
BBC