NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Audrey Hale struggled to cope with the death of a close friend in the months before the rampage that killed six people at a private Christian school, those who knew the school shooter said Wednesday.
The 28-year-old, who attacked The Covenant School on Monday, was devastated by the death in August of Sydney Shere Sims in a traffic accident, former classmate Samira Hardcastle said.
Hale and Sims attended Isaiah T. Creswell Middle School of the Arts and the Nashville School of the Arts.
“Audrey definitely admired Sydney,” Hardcastle said.
One of Hale’s former instructors at the Nossi College of Art & Design, Maria Colomy, said Sims’ death took a great emotional toll on her former student.
“A lot of comments about ‘you were all that mattered’ [and] ‘I’ll miss you forever,’ etc.,” Colomy said, paraphrasing what she saw of Hale’s social media postings.
Sims’ father declined to comment Wednesday.
More on the Nashville school shooting
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Hale as a teen
Hardcastle struggled to reconcile the kind teenager she knew a decade ago as the same person who fatally shot three 9-year-olds, a school administrator, a custodian and a substitute teacher Monday.
“I saw the [police] body camera videos, and the way she was dressed on Monday is exactly what she looked like in high school,” Hardcastle said.
“She wore baggy clothes, kind of mixed-matched clothes. She’d wear a ball cap sometimes,” Hardcastle said. “So exactly how they showed her on the bodycam footage was exactly how I remember her looking and how she always dressed.”
Another high school classmate broke down in tears while speaking with NBC News on…
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