Comprehending The Incomprehensible

This week a 28 year old person apparently decided to end their life via suicide by cop .....

Audrey Hale

 .... this method of suicide is commonly used by:

• those who are afraid of personally taking their own life, 
• those who think self suicide is a sin, or 
• those who have committed a crime and don't want to face incarceration.

Hale was apparently in the 'suicide is a sin' group, and her intention to die was confirmed when she Instagram messaged a former middle school basketball teammate (using both the names, 'Audrey' and 'Aiden') to confirm that her expectation was to die, and that her friend could 'probably expect to hear about me on the news after I die'.

Audrey/Aiden' Suicide Instagram Message

Her friend tried to discourage her after reading the message, and on the advice of her father even contacted the local police and a suicide helpline about her friends suicide post, but no one was immediately available .... however she had no idea what Audrey (Aiden) Hale had actually planned and assumed it was straight suicide.

But shortly afterwards she found out that it was all too late. A then unidentified person had already entered The Covenant School, a private Christian School in Nashville and gunned down 3 adults (all in their 60's) and 3 young children aged between 8 and 9. The shooter was then dead, killed in a gunfight with the police.

The dead shooter was later identified as 28-year-old Audrey (Aiden) Hale who came from a very religious household background, but its also reported that she had been struggling with both mental health issues and a sexual identity/transgender crisis. This seems to be confirmed by Hale's use of another social media account that also included use of the pronouns 'he/him', ... and she possibly also struggled with unrequited lesbian attractions (as her Instagram message implies)  ... all against her strict Presbyterian religious background.

Audrey - Aiden Was
A Conflicted Personality

She still lived with her religious parents, which possibly added to her identity problems, and was also struggling for a regular income, despite qualifying last year as a Nashville-based graphic designer and illustrator. She had supplemented her income from this role, with spells as a cat sitter, and or as a part-time grocery shopper with the food delivery service Shipt. So sexual, financial and housing independence from her parents (and possibly the freedom to express her real sexual identity), may just have seemed an impossible goal.

However, this is no excuse for the wanton murder of children and adults ... after all if she had simply held up a bank, or even just fired her guns into the air on the streets, then that would have drawn the police, and she could have initiated gun fire from them by waiving the guns at them and firing randomly. She would likely have achieved her aim of suicide, or medical/psychiatric attention if she had survived, without killing anyone. But instead she chose to take innocent lives, presumably for notoriety reasons ... 'expect to hear about me on the news after I die'.

Its still not entirely clear why she chose her old childhood school as the scene of her crime, but possibly she had resented her time there as being when she had first struggled with her issues. She was carrying two assault rifles and a pistol when she entered the school through a side door, and had also legally purchased several other weapons despite her psychiatric/mental health problems (some states have laws against this, but they are often unenforceable), and the wishes of her parents (who were apparently unaware of the guns and ammunition she had stashed around their property).

The child victims have been identified as:

• Evelyn Dieckhaus,
• Hallie Scruggs, and
• William Kinney,

all aged 8 or 9.

The adult victims have been identified as:

• Cynthia Peak, 61,
• Katherine Koonce, 60,
• Mike Hill, 61

Hales actions have earned no sympathy, and only a place in infamy, as just the seventh female mass shooter in 20th and 21st century US history:

1. Brenda Spencer: In 1979, carried out her solo shooting of another elementary school in San Diego. Spencer never gave a concrete motive (besides "not liking Mondays") for the shootings in which she shot 11 people, 8 children and 1 cop were injured. Two of the adults died. Bob Geldoff later wrote a song referencing this event.
   
2. Jennifer San Marco: In 2006 she took the lives of six people, in the Goleta postal facility shootings in California before San Marco ultimately committed suicide (she had apparently struggled with paranoia and believed that government forces were conspiring against her).
3. Amy Bishop: In 2010, a disgruntled University of Alabama professor, Amy took out her unhappiness by shooting up a meeting in the university's biology department, that was attended by 12 fellow educators. Three died. She attempted to escape by simply walking out and ringing her husband for a lift. She seemed confused and unaware of her killing spree minutes after carrying it out and denied the victims were dead.
   
4. Latina Williams: In 2015 shot and killed two classmates in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She fired six rounds from a pistol she had got from a pawn shop, shooting Karsheika Graves, a 21-year-old student, and 26-year-old student Taneisha-Deanna Butler as they sat at their desks. She then reloaded the weapon and shot herself in the head. She had no known connection to the two victims, and had exhibited paranoia episodes beforehand.
5. Tashfeen Malik: In 2015 (alongside her husband Syed Rizwan Farook), took part in an Islamic terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. In the attack, they killed 14 people and injured 22 others. Both died in a shootout with law enforcement later that day.
6. Nasim Aghdan: In 2018 a vegan activist and fitness YouTube personality of Iranian-Azerbaijani heritage entered YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California through an exterior parking garage, approached an outdoor patio, and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol. Aghdam wounded three people, one of them critically, before killing herself.
   

But noticeably, apart from the jihadist killer (where you could still make the argument about mental state), all the women had, or have exhibited mental health issues prior to, and related to, the shooting events.

This is not any sort of excuse, but surely its a significant factor in all their actions, and perhaps if their families and or authorities had identified these issues and taken some sort of strong active medical intervention, then maybe this list of shame would be a lot smaller. Audrey (Aiden) Hale obviously had mental health struggles, both around suicidal thoughts, and her sexual identity, as well as low self worth issues, and perhaps would have benefitted from a strong medical intervention e.g. a psychiatric ward.

I'm not in any way defending her (or for that matter any of the others) actions, which frankly were cowardly and unconscionable in the extreme (Hale apparently gunned down any adult or little child she came across, just to get the police to kill her, rather than simply committing suicide, which was possibly a sin which she considered would prevent her entering 'another life' - while gunning down innocents was apparently not such a hinderence).

But sometimes you have to try to understand the killer, to try and comprehend the incomprehensible.

Information: If you are impacted by suicidal thoughts - Suicide helplines are available worldwide. The Samaritans are available in the USA and UK.