The Nashville school shooter warned that something bad was about to happen in messages to a former middle school basketball teammate before opening fire Monday at The Covenant School.
Averianna Patton said she saw the Instagram messages at 9:57 a.m. Monday, less than 20 minutes before police said they received calls about a shooter at the private Christian school.
In the messages, Audrey Hale, the person police identified as the shooter, talked about not wanting to live anymore and said that their family did not know what they were about to do.
Hale is transgender, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. In the first message sent to Patton, Hale signed it as “Audrey (Aiden).”
Patton tried to be supportive, according to screenshots of the messages. In their last message, Hale said that something bad was about to happen and asked for forgiveness.
Patton, of Nashville, attended Isaiah T. Creswell Middle School with Hale. She said the messages were alarming and she sent them to her father and asked if she should contact someone.
“He text back, ‘YES’ in all caps. So after that, that’s when I started making calls,” she told NBC’s “Nightly News.”
The first call she made was to the suicide prevention hotline, she said, which instructed her to contact the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office. The office told her to call a nonemergency number.
Patton said she was told someone would come out to her home. By the time they showed up hours later, she had already left for a meeting. Patton later learned that Hale was responsible for the shooting.
“I’m trying to still understand … Just to learn that I received a message before, it’s just like, ‘Wow,'” she said. “Just pray, just pray.”
Patton said the last time she saw Hale was a few weeks ago at a painting event to celebrate a mutual friend who died in a car crash. Nothing about Hale seemed amiss, Patton said.
Patton said she’s now trying to cope with what happened. “I’m speechless,” she said.
Three children and…
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