Police: Nashville shooter was under a doctor’s care for ’emotional disorder’

NASHVILLE – The attacker who killed six people at a small Christian school in Nashville had been receiving treatment for “an emotional disorder” and hid several weapons from their parents before opening fire, police said Tuesday.

The parents thought 28-year-old Audrey Hale “should not own weapons” and wrongly believed Hale had only owned one gun, which was sold, according to John Drake, the Nashville police chief. But the shooter had legally purchased seven guns at five local gun stores, Drake said, and on Monday morning used three of them to attack the school Hale once attended, killing three small children and three adults.

While the attacker left behind what Drake called a “manifesto,” he said investigators are still trying to determine what could have motivated the massacre at the Covenant School, an academy within a Presbyterian church that averages about 200 grade-school students.

It appears, police said, that the school itself was the shooter’s target, rather than any individual people there. Authorities said the six victims included three students – Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all 9 – as well as staff members Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

via www.yahoo.com

I wonder what the law is around the Nashville Police Department keeping Hale’s manifesto to themselves for the time being. They will be under a lot of pressure to release it. Whether to do so is a complicated decision. One can imagine releasing the manifesto might pour gasoline on the already uncomfortable fires of our culture wars.

As horrible as what their daughter did, I feel for the Hales, her parents. Of course, if I knew more about the situation, I might feel less for them, but as it is, it is easy to imagine an out-of-control daughter lying to them and then carrying out this nightmare crime. Of course, the families of the victims must endure, if they can, the most horrible suffering.