On Monday, a former student of Covenant School in Nashville, Audrey Hale, carried out a deadly attack on the school, joining the list of ex-students who have targeted their alma mater. Hale, a 28-year-old graphic designer who used to design logos for businesses, entered the private school armed with three guns and gunned down six people, including three children. Hale identifies as a man and was born a biological female. People who knew her said she was a quiet student, autistic but highly functional.
Hale is not the only former student to go on a killing spree at their former school. In 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed nineteen children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County. The Sandy Hook School shooting, the fourth deadliest mass shooting in the world, was also perpetrated by a former student, Adam Lanza. Lanza killed 26 people, including 20 children aged below seven years. However, whether Lanza was a former student at Sandy Hook or not remains subject to debate.
The 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida’s Parkland was also perpetrated by a former student, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz. He killed 17 and injured 17 others before being arrested by the police. The 2015 Red Lake Shootings saw a former student, 16-year-old Jeff Weise, kill nine people and injure seven others in Red Lake Senior High School. The 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting saw 20-year-old Eric Houston shoot and kill four people, including three students and one former teacher.
According to a report by Everytown for Gun Safety from 2022, 60% of school-age shooters were current or former students, including all shooters involved in mass shootings and nearly all in self-harm incidents. Another analysis conducted by the group based on the New York City Police Department’s review of active shooter incidents in K-12 schools between 1966 and 2016 revealed that in 75% of these incidents, the perpetrator or perpetrators were current or former students of the school who were of school-age. A separate analysis funded by the National Institute of Justice found that in the 20-year period from 1999 to 2019, which included six mass school shootings and 39 attempted mass school shootings, over 90% of the shooters were current or former students of the school.
Law enforcement officials do not immediately discharge such information in the aftermath of such incidents. The tragic trend of former students targeting their alma mater highlights the need for stricter gun laws and better mental health support for students.
