The gun-control-activist mom of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale begged for privacy after Monday’s mass murder, saying, “I think I lost my daughter today.”
“It is very, very difficult right now,” Norma Hale told ABC News when reached on the phone after her transgender child killed six, including three 9-year-old students. “I can’t talk to you.”
The proud Christian mom — who has regularly posted on social media about the need to “Keep Guns Out of School” in anguish over previous massacres — did not mention the victims as she asked for privacy during the brief chat.
The reference to her “daughter” also appeared to be at odds with the mass killer’s LinkedIn profile using “he/him” pronouns and at times using the male name Aiden.
Police on Monday said officers were still investigating whether Hale’s transgender identity played any part in the motive, which appeared to have been outlined in a manifesto.
A source close to the Hale family told the Daily Beast that Hale was autistic but high-functioning — “and relatively recently announced she was transgender, identifying as he/him.”
Neighbors told ABC that Hale still lived at home with her parents, whom they described as “very nice” and “very religious.”
“I’ve known her since she was a baby,” family friend and neighbor Sandy Durham told the Daily Beast of Hale, saying she saw no signs the artist would become the latest school shooter.
“Never. She was very sweet. I don’t know what happened. It’s very scary,” Durham told the outlet.
“It’s just tragic for everybody. The sweet children that were hurt, killed, the adults. All of it,” she said.
“This is a great family, and it’s a tragedy,” a neighbor also told NBC News.
Hale was a “normal, nice person. Maybe a little quiet,” a neighbor only giving the first name Sean told the Daily Beast.
“Audrey’s parents are probably just as shocked as everybody in the neighborhood is … It just doesn’t seem real,” he said.
“There’s nothing that would have led me to believe that she was capable of such a thing or that she or anybody in that family would have access to, much less ever used, a gun.
“They just don’t seem like the family that, like, is around guns.”
Former classmates at Nashville School of the Arts — where Hale studied from around 2011 to 2014 — expressed similar shock.
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“What she did was unforgivable, but when I knew her, she was a sweet and funny girl,” one friend told DailyMail.com, saying they, “thought for sure it was a mistake at first” when Hale was identified as the child killer.
“She really didn’t fit the school shooter archetype,” said the friend, using the female pronouns the shooter still used while they knew each other.
“I don’t know what would have happened to turn her into this person we see on the news. … Really none would have seen this coming.”
However, the friend, who was not identified, said “no one was surprised” when Hale “came out as trans” after graduating.
Hale later graduated from Nashville’s Nossi College of Art & Design in 2022.
“She was a talented artist and a good student,” school president and CEO Cyrus Vatandoost told ABC. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family, to the victims and their families, and to our city.”
