The senior pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church confirmed that his 9-year-old daughter was among the six killed in Monday's shooting at a Nashville private Christian elementary school.
In a single-sentence statement Tuesday morning, Chad Scruggs—father of Hallie Scruggs—addressed previous reporting that his daughter was among those killed by 28-year-old Audrey Hale in the shooting that left three children and three adult staff members dead.
"Through tears we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus who will raise her to life once again," Scruggs said in a statement shared with reporters.
According to his Facebook page, Scruggs had been a pastor at the church since 2018, when he left his position as an associate minister at Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCPC) in Dallas to join the staff of a growing conservative evangelical congregation that was then in the process of moving on from an internal power struggle, according to the Tennessean.
Scruggs, who was well-regarded in Dallas, also served as a campus minister at Reformed University Fellowship at Southern Methodist University.
PCPC Senior Pastor Mark Davis confirmed in his own statement that Scruggs' daughter was among those killed, writing: "We love the Scruggs family and mourn with them over their precious daughter Hallie. Together, we trust in the power of Christ to draw near and give us the comfort and hope we desperately need."
While police confirmed that Hale—a former student at the school who identified as transgender was killed in a shootout with police—left behind a manifesto, they have shared scant detail about a possible motive, suggesting only that gender identity and relationship with the school could potentially have been factors in what they described as a "targeted" attack. Hale's pronouns on LinkedIn are he/him.
After the shooting, numerous conservative influencers speculated that the shooting was tantamount to a "hate crime" against Christianity amid a broader push by Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature to eliminate LGBTQ-friendly events like drag shows as well as legislation banning surgery involved in gender-affirming care regimens for transgender patients.
Some used the shooting as a rallying cry to double down on such legislation, placing the blame for the shooting not on people's ability to access firearms but on the existence of transgender people, who make up a minuscule percentage of mass shooters nationwide. Nonprofit think tank The Violence Project, for example, found that 98 percent of mass shootings in its database were committed by cisgender men.
According to the Williams Institute research center, around 0.6 percent of Americans over the age of 13 identify as transgender.
The only appropriate response to this shooting in regards to legislation that gets transgender and drag madness out of society and schools is to *double down.*
Let this be a turning of the tide back to reality and sanity.
— William Wolfe 🇺🇸 (@William_E_Wolfe) March 28, 2023Others on the right claimed, without evidence, that the regimen involved in Hale's transition contributed to her mental state entering Monday's shooting.
"We have a manifesto," Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters during a Monday press conference. "We have some writings that we're going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident. We have a map drawn out of how all this was gonna take place.
"There's right now a theory that we may be able to talk about later, but it's not confirmed. So, we'll put that out as soon as we can."
Newsweek has reached out to Nashville police via email for comment.
Update on 03/28/23 at 6.04 p.m. ET with estimate of transgender proportion of U.S. population
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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