NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Audrey Hale struggled to deal with the dying of an in depth buddy within the months earlier than the rampage that killed six individuals at a non-public Christian college, those that knew the varsity shooter stated Wednesday.
The 28-year-old, who attacked The Covenant College on Monday, was devastated by the dying in August of Sydney Shere Sims in a site visitors accident, former classmate Samira Hardcastle stated.
Hale and Sims attended Isaiah T. Creswell Center College of the Arts and the Nashville College of the Arts.
“Audrey positively admired Sydney,” Hardcastle stated.
Considered one of Hale’s former instructors on the Nossi School of Artwork & Design, Maria Colomy, stated Sims’ dying took an ideal emotional toll on her former pupil.
“A variety of feedback about ‘you had been all that mattered’ [and] ‘I’ll miss you without end,’ and so on.,” Colomy stated, paraphrasing what she noticed of Hale’s social media postings.
Sims’ father declined to remark Wednesday.
Extra on the Nashville college capturing
- All the things we all know concerning the Nashville elementary college capturing
- Victims of the Covenant College bloodbath included a 9-year-old who liked to carry out and a college chief devoted to her college students
- Nashville shooter was below take care of emotional disorderand hid weapons at mother and father’ dwelling, police say
- Video reveals youngsters working out of woods throughout Nashville college capturing
Hale as a teen
Hardcastle struggled to reconcile the sort teenager she knew a decade in the past as the identical one who fatally shot three 9-year-olds, a college administrator, a custodian and a substitute trainer Monday.
“I noticed the [police] physique digital camera movies, and the way in which she was dressed on Monday is precisely what she regarded like in highschool,” Hardcastle stated.
“She wore dishevelled garments, sort of mixed-matched garments. She’d put on a ball cap typically,” Hardcastle stated. “So precisely how they confirmed her on the bodycam footage was precisely how I keep in mind her trying and the way she at all times dressed.”
One other highschool classmate broke down in tears whereas talking with NBC Information on Wednesday, grieving the victims and the shooter, whom police killed.
“I doubt that there is anybody you’ll be able to discuss to who would even be capable to reply why. It is not logical,” stated the lady, who requested to not be named out of worry of on-line reprisals. “I will by no means perceive, it as a result of it isn’t a logical factor to do. I am very unhappy for the lack of my buddy, and I am very unhappy for the households and the family members of the victims. I am very unhappy for her mother and father, as a result of they misplaced their little one.”
Hardcastle, a center college artwork trainer, final bumped into Hale a month in the past in downtown Nashville at a present by their mutual buddy and radio character Averianna Patton.
Simply earlier than the capturing at The Covenant College, Patton obtained a message from Hale, who warned that one thing unhealthy was about to occur.
Nothing within the temporary encounter at Patton’s present gave Hardcastle any perception one thing was going to go horrifically fallacious.
“She appeared like she at all times did, simply sort of quiet,” she stated. “However I don’t know if I may go off that two-minute interplay and say how she was feeling.”
‘So loving to everybody’
One other former classmate of Hale’s, Sonia Castelar, stated their highschool was geared towards the humanities and drew loads of several types of college students.
She recalled Hale as dressing in a “quirky, ’90s fashion” and seeming “good and quiet.” Now, she stated, she’s “in shock and disgusted with the whole lot.”
“We had different college students who had been transgender or LGBTQ,” Castelar stated. “Our highschool was actually accepting of that.”
Investigators have stopped in need of publicly assigning a motive to Monday’s assault — though Police Chief John Drake hinted {that a} sense of “resentment” may have fueled Hale’s assault.
The highschool model of Hale confirmed no indicators of “resentment” of anybody, Hardcastle stated.
“No, positively not. She was so loving to everybody, and I believe she might need simply needed to slot in,” Hardcastle stated. “Everybody was form to her, as a result of they knew she might need been on the spectrum, and she or he was so form, so individuals reciprocated that vitality to her.”
Erik Ortiz reported from Nashville and David Okay. Li from Los Angeles County.
