On March 27, 2023, a 28-year-old former student killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville before being shot and killed by responding police officers.
Aiden Hale at The Covenant — Credit: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
On the morning of March 27, 2023, Aiden Hale, a 28-year-old former student of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian Church in America elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, drove to the school and shot through glass side doors to enter the building around 10:10 a.m. Hale first shot and killed a school custodian who attempted to flee. He then went to the second floor, where he shot and killed a substitute teacher and three nine-year-old children at the top of a stairwell. Hale fired into two classrooms, injuring one student, before encountering and killing the school's headmaster in a second-floor hallway. He continued searching for victims in the church offices and sanctuary without further success, fired at a stained-glass window, and then exchanged fire with arriving police officers through a window, disabling two police vehicles but hitting no officers.
Police received a 911 call about an active shooter at 10:13 a.m. and entered the building around 10:23. At 10:25, a five-member police team including Detective Michael Collazo and officer Rex Engelbert confronted Hale and shot him four times, killing him. The threat was declared neutralized by 10:27, fourteen minutes after the first 911 call.
The six people killed were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs, all age 9; substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61; custodian Mike Hill, 61; and headmaster Katherine Koonce, 60. A third-grade student was also shot and injured, and a police officer was injured by shattered glass.
Hale had attended The Covenant School from 2001 to 2006 and described those years as the happiest of his life. Investigators found that Hale had become fascinated with school shootings after watching documentaries about the Columbine massacre starting in 2017 and had planned an attack for years, initially considering a different school before settling on The Covenant School in 2021. Hale conducted reconnaissance, including a faculty-guided tour of the school in September 2021, and left behind extensive writings, including diaries and a planning document. Police initially referred to Hale as a woman using his birth name; MNPD Chief John Drake stated on the day of the shooting that authorities believed Hale identified as trans. Media outlets subsequently reported Hale was a trans man.
In November 2023, three pages of Hale's diary were leaked by a conservative commentator, revealing hate-filled language directed at the school's children. In April 2025, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department closed its investigation, concluding in a 48-page report that Hale was motivated primarily by a desire for notoriety and media attention rather than by race or a grudge against the school, and had chosen The Covenant School because he associated it with happiness and believed its Christian identity would increase the notoriety of an attack. Legal disputes over the public release of Hale's writings continued for years after the shooting, involving the school, victims' families, media outlets, and state officials.
On March 27, 2023, a 28-year-old former student killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville before being shot and killed by responding police officers.
Where did the shooting happen?
The Covenant School, Green Hills, Nashville, Tennessee.
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