(NewsNation) — Three children and three adults were killed in a school shooting in Nashville on Monday. Metro Nashville Police confirmed that the 28-year-old who died after carrying out the shooting at the Christian elementary school was transgender.
While speaking with NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, Dr. Kris Mohandie, a forensic psychologist, said police will likely investigate whether sexual identity struggles were part of the “seeds of grievance” that potentially motivated the shooting.
“It is a reasonable hypothesis to explore investigatively that this individual may have had some issues with navigating that. We know that transgender people in our society unfortunately are subjected to mistreatment, marginalized, stigmatized and rejected and have a lot of unfortunate negative experiences as they are grappling with their identities and trying to be just who they are. That could be the seeds of a grievance,” Mohandie said. “These are reasonable hypotheses that could be part of it or maybe not.”
Psychologist Dr. Erica Anderson joined the conversation, adding that people should not rush to judgment or conclusions until more information has been released about the suspect’s background.
“I’m concerned that people would make too much of whatever personal torment this shooter had that might be related to gender. We don’t know yet. We’ll learn more, I’m sure. It is true that transgender people have it rough in America, maybe more so in recent years due to the publicity. There’s a lot of stigma, marginalization, all the surveys tell us that transgender people in America have a rough road to go,” Anderson said, later adding: “Certainly, there’s no reason to indict all trans people as being violent. The evidence says quite the contrary.”
Police identified The Covenant School shooting suspect as Audrey Hale. Authorities reported discovering a manifesto and have described the shooting as a targeted attack. While investigators continue their work, additional background and details of a possible motive have not been released at this time.
In the video above, watch Cuomo’s conversation with Anderson and Mohandie.