(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Tennessee Star published more details Sunday about Nashville mass shooter Audrey Hale’s mental health problems, revealing that the transgender killer started receiving treatment for autism in 2001.
Hale, a 28-year-old woman who was identifying as a man at the time of the mass shooting, gunned down three Christian children and three adults in March 2023 before being killed by law enforcement.
In a police interview obtained by the Star, Hale’s mother told investigators her daughter began receiving treatment for autism in 2001.
“We had the meeting about the results two days after 9/11 in a conference room. Because of my background — we were meeting with a speech pathologist and she is not allowed to give diagnosis but because of my background that was really the day that I knew,” said Hale’s mother, Norma Hale.
“I was very open with the head mistress –and they agreed. You know, we disclosed all that and they agreed to work with her. And she had a speech and language therapist to help her with a learning disability that she had, auditory processing disorder,” Hale told MNPD investigators.
“But because of the — because of therapy that she got with a very talented speech and language therapist, she was able to do things beyond what we thought she could be able to do. So she could read and do a lot of things that maybe she wouldn’t have been able to do,” she added.
The Star’s publication of the interview with Hale’s mother follows a release last month of internal medical notes about the shooter. According to those notes, Hale told psych workers about “recent thoughts of going into a school and shooting a bunch of people.” Hale began receiving treatment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on April 23, 2001, when the shooter was just six years old.
According to The Star, Nashville police may be investigating whether Hale confided to a VUMC staff member about violent fantasies.
After Hale’s shooting, officials discovered a “manifesto” in Hale’s apartment.
Public interest and concern over what drove the trans mass shooter’s rage has led to intensified calls for the release of the manifesto, which reveals in chilling details what Hale had planned.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
