Covenant School trans shooter plotted Nashville attack for years, kept notebooks with plans: final report

Because of Hale’s consistent diaries over a period of years, police said they were able to collect far more information about her than in a typical investigation.

The Covenant School was attached to a church that Hale once attended. The 9-year-old victims included the pastor’s daughter Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney. Police identified the adults as 60-year-old Head of School Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Mike Hill, 61.

The killer also had plans for “B” and “C” targets – the Opry Mills Mall and a stretch of Belmont Boulevard near Belmont University campus in Nashville. If her parents discovered her plans, she decided she would kill them and attack the Belmont target, according to investigators. 

She spent months practicing at the firing range and painted the phrase “Dark Abyss” on her clothes and guns. That was the name she had given to her depression.

But the attack was delayed multiple times, including once after the death of a close friend in a car crash. 

Hale, who began using the name “Aiden Williams” in the years before her death, was killed by responding officers in harrowing bodycam video.

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