According to officials, a shooting in a Nashville high school cafeteria on Wednesday claimed the life of a female student and injured another.
During a news conference, Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron stated that the 17-year-old shooter, who was also a student at Antioch High School, later shot and killed himself with a revolver. He was recognized by the police as Solomon Henderson.
According to Police Chief John Drake, the shooter killed a 16-year-old girl in the cafeteria after confronting her and firing. She was recognized by the police as Josselin Corea Escalante. According to Drake, authorities are investigating if the students who were shot were targeted and whether there was a motivation.
According to Drake, the male student who was hurt only had a graze and was treated before being discharged from the hospital. According to Aaron, a different student was admitted to the hospital for treatment of a facial injury sustained in a fall.
Aaron stated that when the incident occurred at approximately 11 a.m. CDT, two school resource officers were present in the facility. According to Aaron, they were not in close proximity to the cafeteria, and by the time they arrived, the gunman had already taken his own life and the shooting had stopped.
Situated in Antioch, a neighborhood approximately 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of downtown Nashville, the school is home to roughly 2,000 pupils.
Officials assisted stunned parents in reuniting with their children at a family safety center near a hospital.
On Wednesday afternoon, while his son, a 10th grader, was being kept in the auditorium with other pupils, Dajuan Bernard was waiting at a Mapco service station to reunite with him. According to Bernard, his son was rather shocked when he first told him about the shooting. His son claimed to have heard the gunfire when he was upstairs from the cafeteria.
Bernard informed me that everything was OK and that he was alright.
“This world is so crazy,” he remarked, adding that it could occur anywhere. To stop them from doing this at all, we just need to safeguard the children and raise them properly. The hardest part is that.
According to Fonda Abner, whose granddaughter attends Antioch High, the school lacks metal detectors that would notify authorities of the existence of a firearm. She claimed that although her granddaughter had called her a few times, she had just heard noise and assumed it was a pocket dial. They exchanged a few words before being interrupted.
“Waiting out here is nerve-racking,” Abner remarked.
According to Nashville Schools Superintendent Adrienne Battle, public schools have put in place a number of safety measures, such as partnerships with police for school resource officers, security cameras equipped with software that detects weapons, glass that is resistant to shattering, and security vestibules that act as a barrier between the main entrance and outside visitors.
Sadly, Battle stated that these actions were insufficient to avert this disaster.
There are concerns about whether stationary metal detectors should be taken into consideration, she said.
“We will continue to explore emerging technologies and strategies to strengthen school safety, even though previous research has shown they have had limitations and unintended consequences,” Battle added.
The school shooting on Wednesday occurs almost two years after a shooter killed six people, including three children, at a different private elementary school in Nashville.
In response to the shooting, hundreds of community organizers, families, protestors, and many others worked for months to urge politicians to take gun control measures into consideration.
But GOP lawmakers declined to do so in a state that leans Republican. It’s unlikely that sentiments have shifted sufficiently to take seriously any significant legislation addressing gun regulation, especially because the Republican supermajority remained intact following the election in November.
Rather, politicians have been more receptive to increasing school security. For example, last year, they passed a bill that would permit select staff members and instructors to carry concealed handguns on school property while preventing parents and other educators from knowing who was carrying a weapon.
Other high-profile shootings have occurred in Antioch in previous years. In 2017, a woman was killed and seven others were injured in a shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ. Additionally, a gunman killed four people at a Waffle House in 2018.
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Adrian Sainz of Memphis, Tennessee, and Kimberlee Kruesi of Nashville, both writers for the Associated Press, contributed.
