Audrey Hale

The Tennessee Star newspaper has published on its website the full journal of Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old woman who identified as male who killed three adult staff members and three nine-year-old students at Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville on March 27, 2023.

According to the Star’s article: “Rather than an ideologically driven composition, the ‘manifesto’ — comprised of The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, the spiral notebook found in her car, and the 20 journals written between 2007 and 2022 seized from her residence — is better understood as a collection of writings in which Hale sporadically wrote her thoughts in the months and years preceding her devastating attack.”

Hale was clearly a disturbed young woman. Her writings include complaints that her brain was not working right, that she was born wrong, and that “nothing on earth can save me.” While there is little political messaging, other than a general complaint that the United States does not respect the rights of transgendered persons and gun owners, there is some hostility toward Christians and Hale uses the epitaph “cracker” to refer to white people. She also disparages those at the school for their wealthy and privileged lives.

A judge had ordered that the journal not be released, but the Tennessee Star published it, anyway, insisting that it had obtained the documents legally, it had a right to do so under the First Amendment, and that it was providing a service to the community. Some conservative commentators had complained that there was no reason not to release the journal, while the FBI claimed that to do so would be “dangerous.” Speculation arose that the reason the authorities were refusing to release the journal was because of Hale’s identity as a transgender person who attacked a Christian school, and that if circumstances had been different, such as a Trump-enthusiast attacking a Muslim school, then everything about the shooter would have been released as quickly as possible. As it is, it’s been a year-and-a-half since the shooting. Parents and loved ones of the victims, along with other members of the school community, had requested that the journal not be released to avoid giving Hale the notoriety she wrote she hoped to gain from the shooting.

While issues of freedom of the press and community safety certainly are at the heart of this matter, more to the point is why could Audrey Hale not receive the help she so desperately needed? I don’t have the answer to that because I don’t have information on her relationship with her family, friends, or any possible therapists she may or may not have been seeing. I do know that she was troubled, obviously. Based on what she wrote, she felt that she could not be helped. She was wrong in that respect, but that’s often how people feel, even when not so ill as Audrey Hale. There is a hopelessness in mental illness that can so overwhelm one’s thinking that even the idea of reaching out for help seems pointless. The next question, of course, is why Hale’s lack of hope in addressing her own demons turned her toward attacking others rather than only herself. She expected to die, she writes, and maybe hoped to. But what in her mind triggered her decision to take others down with her? And children?

Even as we grapple with these matters we hear news of yet another school shooting, this one at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia. A fourteen-year-old boy with as of yet no known association with his victims, attacked the school this morning, killing two teachers and two students and injuring others. No motive has been identified, but the suspect is in custody and authorities say he will be tried as an adult. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, a lifelong resident of the community, told reporters, “I went to school in this school system. My kids go to this school system. I’m proud of this school system. My heart hurts for these kids, my heart hurts for our community, but I want to make it very clear that hate will not prevail in this county. I want that to be very clear and known. Love will prevail over what happened today, I assure you of that,” Smith said.

It seems we live on tenterhooks, waiting anxiously for the next word of bad news, of senseless violence, of people going off because of the tiniest perceived offense. What would inspire someone to kill people they don’t know, or attack children. How did we get to the point where killing people has become an option for dealing with one’s tortured mind? Yes, guns are easily available. But guns have been easily available since the founding of our country. Something has changed. People who, in decades past, would never think of shooting someone, much less a school community, now do. How did these ideas get into the minds of people, even those who are seriously mentally ill?

There have always been isolated incidents. I think of the man who randomly shot people from the tower at the University of Texas in 1966. The entire nation was aghast. How could this have happened? Why did he do it? Some doctors suspected a brain tumor found in an autopsy may have contributed to the shooter’s inability to control his temper and actions.

But this is not that. Yes, Audrey Hale was obviously disturbed. But was there no way to identify the root of her disturbance and to mitigate her suffering? The Texas University shooter acted spontaneously, or at least without a detailed plan. Hale had been planning her attack for weeks, if not longer. Who was she in contact with? Did anyone notice anything different, or unsettling? I cannot allow myself to think that this could not have been prevented. Otherwise, we’re just all victims waiting to be taken out.

The truth is, unless one is suicidal or involved in serious crime, such as gang activity or drug cartels, the chances of being killed by a gun in this country are quite remote. Certainly, the poor souls who live in neighborhoods and tenements controlled by cartels or gangs or at greater risk. But being killed by someone who attacks your school is still quite rare, as it ought to be, for heaven’s sake! But why does it continue to happen at all? After all these years since Columbine, schools remain accessible targets for those with disturbed minds or evil hearts. Why is that? Why did Hale, and the boy in Georgia, have any chance of getting close to those schools? Why have we not yet developed an effective strategy to secure our schools and protect our children against these attacks?

I have no answers, and I don’t pretend to. Something has changed. We need to work at bringing back a culture that respects life. Pope St. John Paul the Great spoke of a “culture of death,” and it feels that that is where we’re living. I hope and pray that Sheriff Jud Smith is right when he says that love will prevail. Of course, our faith is that love has already prevailed. We are waiting for the kingdom to be fulfilled while our hearts continue to break.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.