This story is very long, but I encourage you to read it all. It is very telling. I’d like to highlight a few key points.

Audrey Hale felt no hatred against anyone at the school where the former student gunned down six people. In fact, the 28-year-old relished fond memories of The Covenant School and wanted “to die somewhere that made her happy,” Nashville police said.

 

“Hale bore no grudge against the school or staff” and considered them to be “‘innocents’ and victims on par with herself,” the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said.

 

The revelation came in a trove of new details released in a report by Nashville police Wednesday – two years after Hale randomly slaughtered three teachers and three 9-year-old children at the private Christian school.

 

[…]

 

Hale attended The Covenant School in the early 2000s, from kindergarten through fourth grade. The former student denied suffering any emotional or physical abuse during this period, investigators said in the report obtained by CNN.

 

“She felt safe and accepted at The Covenant and made friends with other students,” the report said. “She considered her family life during this time as happy, with a positive relationship with both of her parents and her brother.”

 

But more than 16 years after leaving the school, Hale targeted the beloved alma mater “due to the notoriety she would obtain” and “because she had a personal connection to the school from earlier in her life and felt she had to die somewhere that made her happy,” police said.

I remember the narrative of the time where liberals were insinuating, or outright accusing, that the murderer targeted this little Christian school in revenge for some past wrong. Perhaps they abused her. Perhaps they stifled her trans yearnings. You know, they said, these oppressive Christian schools repress people and cause them to lash out. Some on the Left jumped all over this little school as a proxy to slander all private Christian schools.

Well, it turns out that she chose this school because it was a place that made her happy and was a joyful time in her life. Would that she had stayed in the embrace of Christianity and perhaps there would have been a different outcome.

While the killer “identified as a male and used he/him as preferred pronouns,” Nashville police said, “Under Tennessee law, a person’s gender identity must correspond with their biological sex or with information present on their certificate of live birth.”

 

As a result, authorities described Hale as a female in their 40-plus-page report.

Yes, she was a trans.

“Notoriety was the motive,” the report summary says. “It is known that Hale, and other mass shooters, studied material from Columbine High School prior to committing their attacks.”

Yet another mass killer who was motivated by fame. But why?

Hale suffered from anxiety and social phobias, “which led to her self-isolating more often,” the investigative report said.

 

“Her isolation and loneliness led Hale to begin believing the only true friends she could confide in were her stuffed animals, who she felt would never abandon her,” police said.

 

“She assigned them names and personalities, took them with her whenever she travelled, and began creating cartoons and digital media, including stories where they demonstrated some of the same emotions she felt.”

 

[…]

 

Investigators determined Hale was sane, but evidence suggested worsening anxiety, depression and rage.

She wanted fame because she was lost and lonely. She was clearly suffering from a declining mental state. She felt unfulfilled in her life and lacking worth.

Investigators learned Hale felt chronic loneliness and disappointment.

 

“She felt abandoned and ignored by those she longed to befriend and engage with romantically, which angered her more than anything else,” the report says.

Make no mistake. This was an evil, narcissistic, monster who is 100% responsible for killing six people including three kids.

But I think it is worth noting the societal implications. We hear more and more about our young people feeling increasingly isolated, depressed, and lonely. Marriage rates are down. Birth rates are down. Church attendance is down. Young people are increasingly living alone until much later than previous generations. We have a couple of generations that are just lost. They lack purpose and they lack a connection to the larger community. With an increasing number of lost, lonely young people, more of them will lash out. Some will do it in harmless ways, some will become monsters – and everything in between.

Crime, like politics, tends to be downstream from culture. We have a culture issue and it’s getting worse.