Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale sent alarming messages to a former middle-school basketball teammate shortly before Monday’s deadly massacre, the ex-classmate said.
Hale wrote she planned to commit suicide and that she’d likely be covered on the news in a series of direct messages to Averianna Patton over Instagram at 9:57 a.m. Monday, Patton told the Nashville news station WTVF.
“One day this will make more sense,” Hale wrote, according to the messages published by the TV outlet. “I’ve left behind more than enough evidence behind. But something bad is about to happen.”
Police say they received an active-shooter call at the Covenant School, where Hale was a former student, at 10:13 a.m. The shooting left three 9-year-old students and three adults dead, and Hale was fatally shot by police, officials said.
Patton says she tried to help Hale after receiving her messages.
“I tried to comfort and encourage her and subsequently reached out to the Suicide Prevention Help Line after being instructed to by my father at 10:08 a.m. Audrey has shared with others that she had been suicidal in the past and I knew to take this serious,” Patton told WTVF late Monday.
“I called Nashville’s non-emergency line at 10:14 a.m. and was on hold for nearly seven minutes before speaking with someone who said that they would send an officer to my home,” Patton said. “An officer did not come to my home until 3:29 p.m.”
Patton found out Hale was the school shooter after her name was released by authorities, she said.
Authorities say the shooter had two assault-style rifles and a handgun.
“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Monday. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
