The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) in their final report on Wednesday appeared to downplay the role that religion and gender played in the 2023 Covenant School shooting. 

Shooter Audrey Hale, who was born female but identified as male, fatally shot six people at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023. Three of the victims were elementary aged students. Hale was killed by police shortly after the massacre. 

Hale notoriously slammed white privilege, women, and Christianity in writings prior to the attack, with the shooter stating in one passage that they wanted to "kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little f*gg*ts w/ your white privlages [sic]." Hale was also "hoping for a high death count."

The MNPD claimed in the final report that Hale's primary motivation was notoriety, and that neither the shooter's clear hatred for affluent white people or Christianity played a role in picking the Presbyterian school. Instead, Hale chose it because of the belief that killing children would get more attention, per The Daily Wire.

"In short, the motive determined over the course of the investigation was notoriety…Hale longed for her name and actions to be remembered long after she was dead," the department wrote. "She wanted absolute control of the narrative surrounding the attack, particularly her motives.

“Regarding why she selected The Covenant School, many have speculated [the shooter] selected this location for racial, religious, or economic motives,” the report continued. “It is certainly true she raged over these topics at times in her writings. But none of those motives impacted her decision to attack The Covenant.”

Tennessee Star Editor in Chief and CEO Michael Leahy slammed the report for downplaying clear factors in the shooting, stating the MNPD's report "whitewashed" the tragic event. 

Leahy honed in on the department's failure to highlight Hale's transgender identity, which the shooter wrote about many times in journals. The report acknowledged that Hale identified as male, but did not go into further detail.

“As we know, because we legally obtained about 90 pages of her journal that she wrote from January 1st until March 27th, the day of her death and the day in which she killed six innocent Tennesseans, that the transgender ideology and her focus on her transgender nature was a key element in everything that drove her psychologically,” Leahy said.

“How can you write a 48-page report about a self-identified transgender male whose writings that we’ve seen all indicate anger around the issue of transgenderism and her desire to be fully transgender. How can they issue a report and not mention the word transgender? That is one of the fatal flaws I think of this report,” Leahy added.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.