A mother has disrupted a Fox News journalist’s broadcast from the scene of the latest deadly American school shooting with an impassioned plea.
Ashbey Beasley’s impromptu speech outside The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, came as harrowing footage revealed the gun-wielding shooter stalking the school’s hallways before Monday’s attack.
The shooter, since named as 28-year-old former student Audrey Elizabeth Hale, killed three nine-year-old students and three staffers at the school, in the latest horrifying attack to rock a US town.
As parents and locals grieved outside the school on Monday and police wrapped up a press conference, Ms Beasley approached the media.
“Aren’t you guys tired of covering this?” she said.
“Aren’t you guys tired of being here and having to cover all these mass shootings?”
Ms Beasley, a mother, told the cameras she was also a mass shooting victim. She and her young son survived the July 4, 2022, shooting at Highland Park in Illinois, when a man dressed in women’s clothing opened fire on an Independence Day parade.
Ms Beasley and her son were unharmed but seven others died.
“How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?” she asked on Monday.
“These shootings and these mass shootings will continue to happen until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation.”
The 47-year-old said she was in Tennessee to visit a friend, Shaundelle Brooks. Ms Brooks and Ms Beasley reportedly connected over their shared experience of gun violence, with Ms Brooks’ son, Akilah DaSilva, shot dead in 2018.
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Ms Brooks told CNN that when she heard the news about The Covenant School her heart dropped.
“Here we are again, another mass shooting,” she told Anderson Cooper.
She resisted the urge to race to her other son’s after hearing the news, and waited for further information. She admitted she thought about school shootings every time she dropped her son off for the day.
“We’re not safe anywhere,” she said.
“We’re not safe in schools, we’re not safe when we go out to eat, we’re not safe in church, we’re not safe at the Waffle House.”
Victims of shooting identified
The Covenant School released a statement later on Tuesday, saying its community was “heartbroken”, as the names and faces of those shot dead were revealed.
“We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of a terror that shattered our school and church,” it said.
“We are focusing on loving out students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing.”
The three children who died in the shooting as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. All were aged just nine.
All three were pronounced dead after arriving at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt with gunshot wounds.
The three adults killed were Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
Dr Koonce was the head of the Presbyterian school, Ms Peak was a substitute teacher and Mr Hill was a custodian.
The latest tragedy began to unwind when the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department received its first calls about a shooter at the school at 10.13am on Monday.
By 10.27, Hale had been shot dead by two officers.
Following the shooting, students were taken to a church to be reunited with their families.
Rachel Dibble’s children attend another Nashville private school, but she was at the church as Covenant families found their children.
“People were involuntarily trembling,” Ms Dibble told the Associated Press.
“The children … started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some Froot Loops and now their whole lives changed today.”
Parents trickled out of the building with their youngsters in tow. One woman was visibly distraught as she was escorted alone out of the church to a waiting squad car by police officers who said they were headed to Vanderbilt.
Police probe shooter’s motive
Police Chief John Drake said Hale was transgender, though police are yet to say if they identified as male or female.
Hale lived in the Nashville area and was a former student at The Covenant School.
CNN reported that Hale’s LinkedIn indicated they worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper.
The motive was not immediately known but police said the suspect had drawn detailed maps of the school and had left behind a manifesto and other writings that police would examine.
“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” Chief Drake said.
“We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
He said police were working on a theory about what might have precipitated the shooting and would “put that out as soon as we can”.
