A shooting occurred at Antioch High School in Nashville on Wednesday morning, leaving one female student dead and another student injured.
According to Metro Nashville Police, the shooting took place in the school cafeteria at 11:09 am. The suspect, identified as 17-year-old Solomon Henderson, armed with a pistol, fired multiple shots in a school cafeteria. Further, the police revealed that the shooter killed himself after shooting his schoolmates, as reported by CNN.
A male student victim sustained a ‘graze wound’ to the arm and was released after treatment, police said. Another male student suffered a facial injury but was not shot. Police did not name those victims.
Earlier in Nashville, the police SWAT team had cleared the building, police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference. Metro Nashville Public Schools announced it was making counsellors available to students. “Antioch families, MNPS social workers and guidance counsellors will be available to support you and your student,” the school district said.
According to its website, Antioch High School is home to approximately 2,000 students in grades 9 through 12. The school is located in Nashville’s Antioch neighbourhood, about 10 miles southeast of downtown, as reported by CNN. Two student resource officers, known as SROs, were in the school at the time of the shooting, but Aaron said the incident was over by the time they got to the scene.
“They were not in the immediate vicinity of the cafeteria … By the time the SROs got down there, the shooting had stopped, and the shooter had shot himself,” he said.
The Nashville Fire Department, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Tennessee Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded.
Democratic Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones, whose district includes parts of Nashville and was a vocal proponent of new gun control laws following the shooting deaths of three students and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville in March 2023, said Wednesday no child should be scared “because of the omnipresent threat of gun violence.”
“The fear reverberating around the Antioch and Nashville communities today is a chilling reminder of the human cost of political inaction and the senseless tragedy of gun violence perpetuated by leaders who have prioritized firearms and the profits of the gun industry over the lives of our students,” Jones said. Jones was one of two Black lawmakers expelled and then swiftly reinstated after calling for gun control reform on the House floor in 2023.
