Nashville school shooting suspect posted photos on social media just before opening fire in cafeteria: Police
Metro Nashville Police Department
(NASHVILLE) — A teenager who opened fire with a 9 mm pistol in his Nashville high school cafeteria fired a total of 10 shots within 17 seconds of entering the room, according to police.
Solomon Henderson, 17, had gone into a bathroom and posted photos to social media just before he went to the cafeteria and opened fire, police said.
Henderson shot and killed 16-year-old Josselin Corea Escalante and shot and wounded a 17-year-old boy at Antioch High School around 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to police.
Henderson died in the cafeteria from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, police said.
The injured boy suffered a graze wound and was treated and released, police said.
Authorities are still investigating how Henderson obtained the pistol, Nashville police said Thursday.
The gun was purchased in Arizona in 2022 and was not reported stolen, police said.
No firearms or firearm parts were found during Wednesday’s search of Henderson’s home, according to authorities.
Authorities are now scouring Henderson’s writings and social media presence as they investigate his ideological influences.
A Pinterest account linked to Henderson features photos of past school shooters, including the shooters from Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas, a source told ABC News.
Henderson’s social media presence also shows he may have been in contact with 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who carried out a shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, last month, according to law enforcement sources.
Rupnow, who went by Samantha, also died after the shooting, in which two were killed and several wounded. Rupnow’s account may have been following Henderson’s account at the time of the Wisconsin shooting in December, according to law enforcement sources.
It appears Henderson had two documents on “non-traditional websites, one 51 pages in length, the other 288 pages,” police said.
The 51-page document expressed violent white supremacist beliefs, sources told ABC News. He expressed self-hatred as a Black person, and he wrote of wishing violence on other Black people.
He also expressed violent hatred toward Jews and used antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories to express his views, according to the sources. Henderson appeared to support neo-Nazi accelerationist and violent incel beliefs and expressed a desire to see genocide committed against racial and religious minorities, according to sources.
He belonged to online communities that promote violence and extremism, sources said, and some people in those groups publicly identified Henderson as the school shooter long before his identity was confirmed by authorities.
ABC News’ Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court on Thursday struck down a longstanding federal ban that prevented the sale of handguns to Americans between the ages of 18 and 20 — a landmark gun control regulation in place since 1968.
The conservative Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the federal law banning handgun sales to teens is inconsistent with the nation’s historical tradition and violates the Second Amendment.
The decision cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 opinion by Clarence Thomas in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which significantly expanded gun rights and threatens to rollback other gun safety laws nationwide.
“Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected,” the court wrote in its opinion statement.
The statement went on, “The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th century evidence ‘cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.'”
The immediate nationwide impact of the ruling is unclear. The case is almost certainly bound for the Supreme Court.
Handguns have been the most commonly used weapons in murders and mass shootings for decades in the United States, according to government data analyzed by The Violence Project.
Last term, the Supreme Court upheld a longstanding federal law prohibiting the possession of firearms by people under domestic violence restraining orders.
In the next few weeks, it will consider whether gun manufacturers can be held liable for violent crimes perpetrated by criminals who easily get the weapons.
(WASHINGTON) — While driving home Wednesday night on the George Washington Parkway near Ronald Reagan National Airport, Ari Shulman said a “spray of sparks” in the sky caught his attention as he watched in horror the midair collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter unfold.
Authorities said Thursday that the crash shattered the regional commuter airplane into pieces as it and the military helicopter plummeted into the icy Potomac River, killing everyone aboard both aircraft — 67 victims combined.
“I looked back and [the plane] was banked all the way to the right … it was illuminated yellow underneath and there was a spray of sparks on the underside,” Schulman told ABC News chief national correspondent Byron Pitts.
Security video released shortly after the crash confirmed Shulman’s description of the first major U.S. air disaster in nearly 16 years.
Video footage showed Flight 5342 with 60 passengers and four crew members aboard making its final approach to Reagan National when it was struck by a Black Hawk helicopter traveling south with a flight crew of three.
“I knew something was very wrong because it was very, very close to the ground — banked all the way to the right,” Shulman of Alexandria, Virginia, said.
He said he glanced at the road for just a moment.
“I looked back again and it was gone,” Shulman said. “I didn’t see any crash into the ground. I didn’t see a fireball, an explosion, or flames.”
Fire Chief John Donnelly of the Washington D.C. Fire Department said at a news conference Thursday morning that an American Airlines plane, operated by its subsidiary PSA Airlines, was found “inverted” in three pieces in waist-high water of the Potomac. He said the helicopter was discovered nearby.
“At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly said the search-and-rescue mission was not a search-and-recovery operation. He said 27 bodies had been recovered from the airplane and one from the helicopter.
Donnelly said that at 8:48 p.m. local time, the control tower at Reagan National sent out an alert of a plane crash.
“Very quickly, the call escalated,” Donnelly said.
He said 300 first responders raced to the river in a desperate attempt to find survivors, which would prove futile. Within 10 minutes, the first emergency unit arrived on the grisly scene, surveying the wreckage of both aircraft in the Potomac River.
“The water that we’re operating in is about 8 feet deep,” Donnelly told reporters at the somber early-morning briefing. “There is wind … pieces of ice out there, so it’s just dangerous and hard to work in. And because there’s not a lot of lights, you’re out there searching every square inch of space to see if you can find anybody.”
He added, “Divers are doing the same thing in the water. The water is dark, it is murky, and that is a very tough condition for them to dive in.”
Meanwhile, the medical staffs of three major Washington, D.C., hospitals said they were prepared to treat victims, but as the minutes turned into hours, no ambulances arrived from the crash site with patients.
From the banks of the Potomac, search helicopters were seen probing the water with searchlights as fire boats made trips back and forth through the icy Potomac, transporting what appeared to be debris from the crash, including suitcases.
Inside, the usually bustling airport was eerily quiet Wednesday evening. The departure and arrivals boards were nearly blank.
Jack Potter, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said some family members were waiting to pick up loved ones before the crash, and American Airlines had set up a center in the airline’s lounge for family members.
(ALBUQUERQUE) — A 13-year-old boy has been arrested for murder after police said he and two other juveniles intentionally ran down a bicyclist in New Mexico last year in a fatal hit-and-run that was filmed from inside the vehicle.
Police said they are still searching for the two other children — a 15-year-old boy who also faces a murder charge and a 12-year-old boy — in connection with the incident.
The victim, 63-year-old Scott Habermehl, was riding in a bike lane the morning of May 29, 2024, while commuting to work when he was struck in a hit-and-run, police said.
Police said there were no witnesses who saw the vehicle flee, and investigators were unable to find any surveillance footage of the incident.
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said the case likely would have gone unsolved — until video taken from inside the vehicle of the incident was posted on social media.
The video, which police released on Tuesday, is “extremely disturbing,” Medina said.
“You hear the discussion of, they see the guy on the bike, and they make the decision that they’re going to strike him, they’re just going to bump him, and they murdered this individual,” Medina said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“We’ve all looked at it, and it is just horrific that this could be done to another human being,” he said.
Police got a new lead on the case in February, after two juveniles reported the video, one to a parent and the other to a middle school official in Albuquerque, according to Cmdr. Kyle Hartsock with the Albuquerque Police Department’s criminal investigation division.
“The video had been posted to Instagram showing three individuals in a car purposely running over a cyclist,” Hartsock said during the press briefing.
Officers determined the video was from the May 29, 2024, hit-and-run, and were able to identify the three individuals in the car, which is believed to have been stolen, police said. They were “literally laughing about what they had just done as they fled,” Hartsock said.
In the video, someone can be heard asking, “Are you guys recording it?”
The back passenger, who police said is believed to be the 15-year-old, says to “just bump him, brah” after the car accelerates.
“Like bump him?” the driver responds.
“Yeah, just bump him. Go like 15, 20,” the back passenger says.
The video released by police ends just before the collision.
The three juveniles are believed to be friends, Medina said. Authorities believe the 13-year-old was driving the car at the time.
Police obtained murder arrest warrants for the two teenagers late last week, Hartsock said.
The 13-year-old was taken into custody on Monday and booked into a juvenile detention center, police said. He had been on juvenile probation following an arrest by Albuquerque police last year, police said. He was arrested on an open count of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, leaving the scene of an accident involving great bodily harm or death and unlawful possession of a handgun by a person, police said.
Police are asking for the public’s help in locating the two other juveniles. Hartsock urged the 15-year-old, who faces the same charges as the other teen, to turn himself in.
The 12-year-old is a missing person out of Torrance County and is listed as a runaway, police said. He is too young to be charged and booked into a correctional facility, police said.
“We hope that the rest of the system is able to deal with this individual and make sure there’s consequences for what they have done, and make sure that they’re rehabilitated if it’s possible,” Medina said.
The 12-year-old was seen holding a firearm in the video, according to police. Medina said it is unclear what happened to the weapon.
The boy was 11 at the time of the incident, Medina said, calling the young age “surprising.”
“All of us that have kids in here, think of your 11-year-old out doing this. It is just mind-boggling,” Medina said.
The chief said they believe they have tracked down the vehicle involved in the incident.
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller called the incident “unimaginable.”
“It’s something that, on the one hand, is incredibly heartbreaking because of their age and how they’re caught up in the cycle of violence,” he said at the briefing. “On the other hand, this is absolutely terrifying.”
The juveniles are not believed to have known the victim, Medina said, noting, “It seems random.”
Habermehl worked at Sandia National Labs and is survived by his wife and two sons, according to his obituary.
“Scott took great joy in sharing his hobbies with his sons, whether it was playing baseball in the yard, biking through the Bosque, hiking in his beloved Rocky Mountains, or skiing with them in the backcountry,” the obituary stated.
Medina asked for privacy for the family at this time.
“They, in a way, suffered the first time, feeling that this individual was the victim of a motor vehicle death,” he said. “Now, with the new information that’s come out, I’m sure it ripped open new wounds.”
Keller remembered Habermehl as a “stand-up member of the Sandia Labs community” who was “well-accomplished and loved by folks in his community out in Corrales.”
The mayor commended the police department on its investigation.
“Now we know what happened, we can at least tell the truth about what happened to Scott,” Keller said. “That truth involves a truth we all have to hold ourselves accountable to, which is we each have a role to play. And in this case, there are dozens and dozens of ways, dozens of cracks that this child, these children, fell through. But that is never an excuse.”
“We have to commit to do more and all of us have an answer of what we think would improve this criminal justice system, and for us, we know that our first step is actually to catch these remaining two individuals,” he continued.
