Teenager fatally shoots student and himself at Antioch High School, police say

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The investigation into why a Nashville high school student fatally shot a classmate before killing himself has focused on his online writings, which authorities describe as warning signs. Dozens of pages posted on social media accounts that anti-hate analysts believe belonged to the gunman include racist ideologies and plans for the shooting.

Solomon Henderson, a black 17-year-old student at Antioch High School, shot and killed Josselin Corea Escalante, who was 16 and Hispanic, in the school cafeteria on Wednesday, then turned the gun on himself.

The shooting has left Tennessee’s capital once again struggling with the aftermath of a tragic school shooting. Almost two years before, a shooter opened fire on one private elementary school in Nashville, killing six people, including three children.

Anti-hate analysts quickly identified dozens of pages believed to be from Henderson filled with calls for violence and racist comments, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies, expressions of shame that he was black, and praise for specific people who did well -known shootings.

The writings also include plans for the school shooting, but do not name Escalante as the target.

Police revealed on Thursday that a further 288-page document is also under investigation.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism issued an analysis of the shorter document, saying it appears to be authentic. The analysis came after cross-referencing its content with social media believed to be his, said Carla Hill, the center’s senior director of investigative research.

Jared Holt, senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which focuses on hate and extremism in the United States, said it’s not unheard of for white supremacy movements to attract people of color.

“At least in my experience, this is probably the most extreme case of this that I’ve seen today,” said Holt, who also analyzed the document and believes it to be Henderson’s.

While local law enforcement has been tight-lipped about the details of Henderson’s writings, they confirmed Thursday that he fired 10 rounds from a 9 mm handgun within 17 seconds of entering the cafeteria. The gun was loaded with nine rounds when it was found by police, authorities said.

The gun was purchased by a person in Arizona in 2022 and was not reported stolen, police said. The origin of the gun is still under investigation.

The release of Henderson’s alleged writings stands in stark contrast to the lengthy legal challenges surrounding the 2023 Covenant School shooting. A request to police to release the gunman’s private writings became a complex fight that hit the parents of traumatized students against a coalition of local news media, nonprofits and a Republican legislature. A Tennessee judge last year sided with the parents and ruled the shooter’s script cannot be released. The legal battle continues.

Investigators have yet to establish a connection between Henderson and the victims, and police said the shooting may have been accidental, according to an affidavit.

A student who was grazed by a bullet on Wednesday was treated and released from the hospital. Another student was taken to a hospital for treatment of a facial injury that occurred during a fall.

Nashville schools officials have faced questions about why new technology that uses a school’s cameras and AI capabilities to detect weapons didn’t trigger an alert Wednesday. The lack of metal detectors has also been brought into focus, and while Superintendent Adrienne Battle has said there are pros and cons to metal detectors, she said nothing is off the table.

“Based on the shooter’s location and proximity to the cameras, it was not close enough to get an accurate reading and to activate that alarm,” Sean Braisted, director of communications and technology for Metro Nashville Public Schools, said at a news conference Thursday. . He said the system was activated when police drew their weapons on Wednesday.

In October, a 16-year-old Antioch High School student was arrested after school resource officers and school officials discovered through social media that he had brought a gun to school the day before. When he was stopped the following morning, officers found a loaded gun in his pants, police said.

And just hours after the Antioch shooting, an 18-year-old student at another Nashville school, McGavock High School, was arrested Wednesday for having a gun in his backpack while playing basketball in the gym after school, police said. The student said the gun did not belong to him and he did not know it was in his backpack.

GOP lawmakers in the Republican-dominated state have long refused to consider enacting gun control measures, even after a wave of demonstrations and pleas from families and advocates following the Covenant shooting. With the Republican supermajority intact after the November election, it is unlikely that attitudes have changed enough to consider any meaningful bills that would address gun control.

Instead, lawmakers have been more open to adding more security to schools — including passing a bill last year that would allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on the elementary school grounds and prevents parents and other teachers from knowing who was armed.

Antioch, a growing and diverse area about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of downtown Nashville, has seen other high-profile shootings in recent years. ONE 2017 fatal shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ killed one woman and injured seven people. And in 2018, a the shooter killed four people at a Waffle House.

In an interview with Nashville Noticias, a Spanish-language news outlet, German Corea, Escalante’s father, said he was told his daughter was unconscious after the shooting, but he had hoped she would be OK.

“When they took my daughter out of school, she had blood on her face,” he said in the interview, which was published on the business’s Facebook page. “She had already lost her life when she was taken to the hospital.”

He said his daughter liked to sing and “smile a lot.” He had been teaching her to drive, with plans to take her to get her driver’s license this week, and that “ever since she was a little kid, she’s dreamed of being a doctor.”

“We carry her smile in our hearts,” he said. “She was a very happy girl, very close to me.”

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Associated Press reporters Jonathan Mattise and Travis Loller in Nashville and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tenn., contributed.