Covenant families recount Nashville school shooting in emotional special session testimony

Abby Mclean held up a photo of her children and asked lawmakers to look at them.

How should she explain why some Tennessee House Republicans want to open up schools to more guns, the very things her children are now afraid of after surviving a school shooting in March?

“How do I explain to these children that that’s your solution?" McLean said. "I want an answer."

The Covenant School mother was testifying against a bill that would relax restrictions on which members of the public could carry handguns onto public school grounds, into basketball games and football stadiums, onto school buses. School officials would have no authority to block them from doing so.

McLean was one of several Covenant parents to offer emotional, often wrenching first-hand experiences of the school shooting that left three children and three staff members dead in March. They vehemently opposed HB 7064, sponsored by Rep. Chris Todd, R-Madison County, who argued more guns at schools will make children safer.

The Covenant testimony, given in two highly charged committee meetings on Wednesday, didn’t sway Todd from his position. He appeared to ignore testimony on Wednesday morning that the Covenant School had armed personnel on staff, and at one point suggested the firearms the shooter used to murder three children and three staff members were irrelevant.

Todd said the person "probably would have driven over those kids" at recess if a gun wasn't available, infuriating the committee room and prompting several Covenant moms whose children survived the shooting to quickly walk outside.

The bill ultimately died on a tie vote after a chaotic four hours where at least one Republican tried to close debate, which would have blocked Covenant parents from testifying.

Parents share wrenching personal details

The parents this week have shared wrenching personal details from the school shooting, testimony that Sarah Shoop Neumann said takes great courage to give amid crowded, heated rooms.

Shoop Neumann said parents "expect more" from lawmakers who wanted to block debate on the bill Wednesday.

"We expect people to come to the table and engage," Shoop Neumann said.

Earlier in the day, sobs broke out in a House committee room as Becky Hansen described how her 5-year-old son's Covenant School teacher told the class to race to see who was the fastest when she realized someone had opened fire inside the school. The teacher wanted to get her pre-K students into a safe space as fast as possible without scaring the children.

Hansen and fellow Covenant mom Melissa Alexander also testified in opposition to Todd's bill, which would allow any active or retired law enforcement, military and enhanced handgun permit holders to carry handguns on public school grounds. Enhanced handgun permit holders are only required to attend eight hours of training to get a permit.

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"We had armed representatives in the Covenant School. That was not a deterrent for the shooter," Hansen said. "Expecting a handgun to go up against a semi-assault rifle that can expend multiple rounds is going to add another death. It's unreasonable to expect a small gun to go against that powerful of a weapon."

Autopsy records, alarm bills draw emotional testimony

Meanwhile, House members advanced a bill to make autopsy records and medical examiners' reporters of minors excluded from public law.

The parents of Covenant victims Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney urged lawmakers to pass the bill via written statements read by Mary Joyce, the mother of a 9-year-old who was in the classroom shot at by the active shooter in March.

"If Hallie had only been wounded, there would be no public access to the medical trauma her body sustained," the Scruggs said in the statement. "Why should that be any different when her injuries resulted in death?"

In a statement, Erin Kinney, William's mother, said the availability of records retraumatizes and revictimizes "those of us who had to go to the hospital and identify the broken bodies of our children, shot through with multiple holes they could not survive."

Kinney also provided a statement urging lawmakers to support a purposed bill that would establish standards for school protocols in the event a of a fire alarm outside of a scheduled fire drill.

Kinney said in her statement that many at Covenant initially believed the active shooter situation was a fire due to a blaring fire alarm, masking the initial sounds of gunfire. William, as line leader of his class, followed protocol to lead his classmates out of the classroom ahead of the teacher, who is trained to stay behind and sweep the classroom in the event of a fire emergency.

"Fire alarms can be deadly, forcing kids toward a shooter and not away from one," Kinney, who was not at Wednesday's hearing, said in the statement. "At Covenant, for example, the thick haze of smoke released by a rapidly fired rifle automatically triggered a fire alarm."

HB 7002 was sponsored by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland. Lamberth said there are different ways schools can differentiate between alarms through alerts and technologies, and his bill is simply requiring each school board to have procedures in place that make sense for their schools.

The Education Administration Committee advanced the bill.

Reach Melissa Brown at mabrown@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Covenant families describe Nashville shooting in TN special session