New Details Emerge About Nashville Shooter Audrey Hale's Manifesto

Police said the suspect in Monday's shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, that left six people dead did not single out any of the victims, but a motive for the killings has yet to be determined.

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Nashville Police Chief John Drake gave reporters their first glimpse into the manifesto the suspect, Audrey Hale, 28, had left behind before the shooting.

According to Drake, Hale had outlined in the manifesto plans to attack "multiple" locations in the Covenant School, with detailed maps of those locations as well as action plans describing how the killings would be carried out.

But Drake ruled out rumors that Hale—who sent a vague message to a friend hinting about doing "something bad" the morning of the shooting—had specifically targeted any single person in the shooting rampage. The six victims—three children and three adult staff members—included the school's head and the 9-year-old daughter of a minister at the Presbyterian church that operates the school.

"We feel that the students that were targeted were randomly targeted," Drake told reporters. "There was not any particular student there that she was looking for at the time."

However, Drake had little to offer on a specific motivation for why Hale— who identifies as transgender with he/his pronouns and a former student at the school—decided to enter the building and start shooting. He said specifics of the manifesto were still under investigation.

"There's quite a bit of writing to it," Drake told reporters. "I have not read the whole entire manifesto. Our team and the FBI have been working on this."

Newsweek has reached out to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department via email for additional comment.

The killings—which conservatives have speculated were specifically targeted at a Christian institution—came after Tennessee's Legislature had been working on legislation aimed at the transgender community, as well as increasing residents' ability to purchase firearms.

Earlier this year, the Legislature passed legislation restricting drag shows and banning surgery and other forms of gender-affirming care for minors. This month, Republican Governor Bill Lee signed both bills but has declined to support legislation tightening access to firearms, as well as legislation in support of arming teachers.

"We're not looking at gun restriction laws in my administration right now," Lee said in a press conference last summer. "Criminals don't follow laws, criminals break laws. Whether they are a gun law or drug law, criminals break laws.... We can't control what they do, but we can control what we can control."

Drake said that Hale owned seven guns in total and that all of the firearms used in the killings were purchased legally from different gun dealers in the area. In Nashville, law enforcement has the authority to seize the weapons of those it believes are suicidal or are actively threatening harm.

But Hale was not known to the police. While the friend who received Hale's message the morning of the shooting reported it to law enforcement, no one had reported Hale in the days before the shooting.

"Had it been reported that she was suicidal or that [Hale] was going to kill someone and had [it] been made known to us, we would have tried to get those weapons," Drake said. "But as it stands, we had absolutely no idea who this person was [or] if she even existed."