Tennessee Trans School Killer Purchased Guns With Federal Financial Aid
Hale entered the private Covenant School shortly after 10 a.m. on March 27, 2023. The 28-year-old was armed with three loaded firearms and immediately opened fire, shooting six people in less than 15 minutes before police could shoot and kill her.
It is the deadliest school shooting in Tennessee history Radar learned that it was all financed with government money.
Among the first pages of her “planning journal,” Hale shared a detailed list of her personal savings account, including $3,186.78 in checks from Nashville’s Nossi College of Art and Design.
These checks were apparently scholarships awarded to Hale through the federal government’s Pell Grant program, which was awarded to students who “exhibit exceptional financial need.”
This confirms statements Hale’s mother previously told investigators. When officials asked how her daughter could afford the weapons used in her deadly rampage, the mother said, “It was the grant money.”
Hale had apparently planned the attack for weeks, describing in her death diary her research into different types of weapons, how to use them, and formulating notes from other devastating school shootings.
Texts and messages she sent to friends indicate she intended to die, but they did not reveal that she was about to carry out a horrific attack on innocent schoolchildren and staff.
Shortly before she shot through the school’s glass windows and was seen on security camera footage maneuvering through pre-K and into the sixth-grade hallways, Hale sent several direct messages to Avarianna Patton on Instagram.
In the first message, Hale confessed that she would die that day.
“So basically that message I posted here about you was actually a suicide note,” Hale wrote in the message. “I plan to die today.”
Hale frantically followed the shocking message with another, emphasizing the reality of her words. “THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!!” the suspect followed with a second message.
Both messages went unanswered, but Hale continued, warning that Patton would “probably hear about me on the news after I die.”
Hale then sent another message as her “final farewell.”
After a lengthy investigation, Nashville police concluded earlier this year that Hale, who attended the Covenant between 2001 and 2005, first planned her slaying purely for fame.
“Hale longed for her name and actions to be remembered long after she was dead,” the report said. “Even though numerous disappointments in relationships, career ambitions and independence have fueled her depression, and even though this depression has made her highly suicidal.”
Nashville police said Hale’s personal writings and videos indicated the troubled individual “expected to have books and documentaries dedicated to her.”
A previous psychological assessment found that Hale suffered from “major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, anger management problems, and was both emotionally and socially underdeveloped.”
According to the official report, she already carried out her gruesome plan in the summer of 2018.
“After writing a diatribe against her ‘best friend’ for choosing a relationship with a man over her, Hale decided it was time to make others notice her for a change,” the report said. “She felt that by ‘killing a bunch of kids’ she would no longer be ignored.”
