Teen fatally shoots female student, wounds another at Nashville high school, police say
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A female student was killed and another student was injured Wednesday in a shooting in a Nashville high school cafeteria, authorities said, jarring the community nearly two years after another school massacre sparked a debate for gun reform in Tennessee.
The shooting occurred in Antioch High School shortly after 11 a.m., according to Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron. Authorities said a male student armed with a pistol opened fire in the cafeteria, fatally shot Josselin Corea Escalante, 16, and left another male student with a graze wound. The school's two resource officers were present in the building, but not in the cafeteria at the time of the shooting and were not able to intervene before the shooter turned the gun on himself, Aaron said.
The suspected shooter, identified as Solomon Henderson, 17, was an active student at the school and was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police. Metro Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake said it was not clear if the shooting was targeted, or if there was a motive behind it.
The police chief said the suspect rode the bus to Antioch High School Wednesday morning before making his way to the cafeteria, where he confronted and fatally shot a fellow student. The shooter fired several rounds before turning the gun on himself, according to Drake.
Drake said an investigation is underway into the shooting, including a variety of leads. A fourth student was also transported to the hospital for minor facial injuries from a fall.
The shooting comes nearly two years after three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members were killed in a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter then was killed by police.
'Heartbreaking day'
Worried parents rushed to the school as the news spread, jamming the exit near the school as they desperately tried to navigate police blockades. By 1 p.m., more than 100 had gathered at the reunification site about a half mile from the school as buses full of students arrived.
Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle called it a "heartbreaking day" for Antioch High, Metro Nashville Police Department, and the greater Nashville community.
"My heart goes out to these families as they face unimaginable loss," she said.
Chante Frye said her daughter, a ninth grader, was in a classroom when she heard the gunshots. She texted her mom that the school was on lockdown.
"It was terrifying," Frye said, as she stood across from the Ascension Saint Thomas Antioch hospital where reunification with students was about to occur. "But it's almost not surprising because it's getting worse with the fights and the violence at school."
Social media activity sheds light on suspected shooter
Social media activity uncovered Wednesday shed some light on the suspected shooter as police sought to identify a motive behind the attack.
"We believe there's some materials out there, and maybe they were seen," Drake said, adding if someone "said something, maybe more could have been done."
A nearly 300-page document posted on X contains numerous selfies of what appears to be the shooter with various alt-right paraphernalia scattered between statements against “race mixing,” wishes to “take revenge” on society, statements praising Adolf Hitler and pages of explicit photos from previous school shootings.
Social media accounts linked in the document and scattered across many platforms including X, Kick and TikTok focused heavily on “groyper” content — a nickname used by many online white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups — as well as “incel” content, a name referring to young men who claim to be “involuntarily celibate” and espouse incredibly violent misogynistic views.
On a Bluesky account linked in the document, a post on Wednesday morning read, “Today seems like a good day to die.”
The shooter also appeared to have livestreamed the attack on multiple platforms. On Wednesday night, Kick confirmed the shooting was partially livestreamed on the site, and that the account was "rapidly" banned and the content removed.
Student heard 'big pop' on way to the cafeteria
Brandi Lemons, 18, a senior at the high school, said she was walking into the cafeteria with other students for lunch when she heard gunshots.
“I heard a big pop and we all turned around and tried to find out what it was, and then three more pops after that and we all took off running to the left side of the cafeteria,” Lemons said.
She said she was about to climb over a milk counter to escape when she saw the shooter walk around a corner toward her. Lemons said he then put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The shooter was a student at the high school, Lemons said, but noted she had never spoken with him.
Lemons said she ran through the cafeteria’s kitchen and out the school’s back exit, where she called her father from the parking lot to pick her up. She said she and her classmates were all shaken.
“Right now we’re scared and confused,” she said.
White House monitoring Nashville school shooting
The White House said in a statement that it was monitoring the shooting.
"The President and his team are monitoring the news out of Nashville," the statement read. "As details unfold, the White House offers its heartfelt thoughts and prayers to those impacted by this senseless tragedy and thank the brave first responders responding to the incident."
Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee offered his condolences to the victims and the community.
"I’ve been briefed on the incident at Antioch High School and am grateful for law enforcement & first responders who responded quickly and continue to investigate," Lee said in a statement. "As we await more information, I join Tennesseans in praying for the victims, their families & the school community."
School official describes safety measures at Antioch High
Multiple safety measures are in place at Antioch High, Battle said, including school resource officers, a secured vestibule at the entrance, and cameras with weapon-detection software.
Battle said Antioch High School will be closed for the rest of the week “to allow time for students and staff to grieve" in the wake of the shooting, and the school district is arranging grief counseling.
The director noted Wednesday's assault is "deeply personal" for her, as she recalled an accidental shooting that left a 13-year-old boy dead in 1994 when she attended John Trotwood Moore Middle School in Nashville.
Battle also thanked the school staff who responded quickly in the aftermath of the shooting.
"Their actions were heroic on a dark day for our school community," she said.
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Echoes of shootings at Covenant, Waffle House, Burnette Chapel
The shooting jarred the Nashville community on a cold, clear morning nearly two years after three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members were killed in a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter was later killed by police.
It's not the first time a shooting has rocked this particular cross-section of Antioch.
Four people were killed and several were wounded in a mass shooting at a Waffle House along Murfreesboro Pike in 2018. In 2017, one person was killed and six were injured in a mass shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ along Pin Hook Road. Both locations are roughly one mile from Antioch High.
Voices for a Safer Tennessee, a nonprofit organization formed in the fallout of the Covenant School shooting, has advocated for gun reform in Tennessee. Despite a special legislative session on gun control and mental health held in August 2023, Tennessee lawmakers have not passed any meaningful gun reform.
"Voices for a Safer Tennessee is devastated to learn about the shooting inside the Antioch High School cafeteria today," the organization said in a released statement. "Our hearts break for the students, families and staff impacted by this tragedy. Schools should be safe spaces where children can learn and grow without fear of violence. We also stand alongside the families of victims and survivors of mass shootings who are continually retraumatized when news of yet another shooting breaks."
Professor: Tennessee refuses to enact gun safety policies
Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a sociology professor and director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, said Wednesday's school shooting is a tragedy we need to learn from.
"Like so many other shootings in Nashville, they happen in places where we shouldn't have to worry about the safety of our family or our children or ourselves," Metzl said. "We need to study this and learn from it, what went wrong, and then try to rectify it through commonsense policies and regulations that will respect the rights of gun owners, but also keep schools safer."
Metzl is the author of "What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms," a book published in 2024 examining the 2018 Waffle House shooting in Antioch. He said he has proposed some policies to the legislature before that would make guns harder to access — such as red flag laws and expanded requirements for background checks — but they have never passed.
Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group, ranks Tennessee 29th in the country for its strength of gun safety laws. Everytown notes Tennessee has one of the highest rates of firearm deaths in the U.S. at 22 fatalities per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of nearly 14 deaths.
"I think there are a lot of policies that can help," Metzl said. "We just absolutely refuse to do them in Tennessee."
Contributing: Janet Loehrke, Paste BN; Evan Mealins, Kirsten Fiscus, Diana Leyva, Austin Hornbostel, Melissa Brown, Craig Shoup, Vivian Jones, Andy Humbles and Angele Latham, Nashville Tennessean
(This story was updated to add new information.)