According to law enforcement sources, a social media account linked to the suspect in the Nashville high school shooting may have had contact with the suspected Madison school shooter’s account.
Police said that Solomon Henderson (17), a student at Antioch High School, opened fire on Wednesday in the cafeteria, killing Josselin Escalante, 16, and injuring another 17-year-old.
Police said that Henderson, who had a pistol in his hand, died of a gunshot wound to the brain that he self-inflicted.
Police said that the injured 17-year-old boy had a graze wound and was released from hospital.
Police said that a motive was not known. However, according to sources Henderson had left a large amount of data on the internet and social media.
According to a reliable source, a Pinterest account associated with Henderson contains photos of previous school shooters. These include the shooters in Parkland and Uvalde.
According to law enforcement, Henderson’s social media presence shows that he was in touch with Natalie Rupnow (15), who shot at Abundant Life Christian School, in Madison, Wisconsin last month.
Rupnow (also known as Samantha) died after the shooting in which two people were killed and others injured.
According to law enforcement sources, Rupnow may have followed Henderson’s story at the time of Wisconsin’s shooting in December.
Sources say that authorities are also looking into a BlueSky profile believed to be connected to Henderson. Sources say that one of the BlueSky postings — made the day before the shooting — featured an edited image of Rupnow. A second post made the same day spoke of the intention to conduct the shooting with another person.
Sources said that Henderson had also shared a 51-page document with violent white supremacist views before the shooting. He wrote about his hatred of himself as a Black man and how he wished violence on Black people.
According to sources, he also expressed a violent hatred towards Jews and used antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories to express his opinions. Henderson seemed to be in support of neo-Nazi accelerationists and violent incel beliefs and expressed a wish to see genocide against racial or religious minorities.
Sources said that Henderson belonged to an online community that promoted violence and extremism. Some people within those groups publically identified Henderson as the shooter before authorities confirmed his identity.
Rupnow appeared to be interested in neo-Nazi ideology and neo-Nazi violence, according to her social media accounts.
According to information given to law enforcement, she also seemed to be interested and engaged in online forums that praised mass shooters. She posted about the Columbine shootings and included a photo of the Parkland shooter.
Weapons detection system at school failed to work
Metro Nashville Public Schools reports that an artificial intelligence system designed to detect weapons in Antioch High School was unable to detect the gun.
The AI-based system Omnilert scans video footage from cameras to detect guns and other weapons.
Sean Braisted, spokesperson for the school district, said that the system did not work in this case because of the location of the shooter and the gun. He said that the system went off when armed police entered the school.
Braisted stated that the system had worked in the past. It even detected realistic toy weapons like water pistols.
He said that these systems could only detect weapons visible to cameras. “That’s the reason we have other safety measures like secure doors and shatter-resistant Windows, School Resource Officers, and safety drills.”
