Lengthy earlier than 17-year-old Solomon Henderson walked into his college cafeteria with a gun, authorities in Tennessee have been alerted to his threatening and violent conduct.
In 2020, when he was 13, his mother referred to as the police, saying he punched her within the face and tried to hit her with a chair after she requested him to wash up the yard. An officer with the Clarksville Police Division charged Henderson with easy assault, in keeping with an incident report that ProPublica and WPLN Information obtained by means of a information request. The arrest has not been beforehand reported.
In 2023, Nashville cops visited the household’s residence and stated they eliminated two weapons. A Police Division spokesperson stated the weapons belonged to adults within the residence, however the incident report couldn’t be launched as a result of the go to concerned a minor.
At Antioch Excessive Faculty a 12 months later, Henderson pulled a knife on a 15-year-old woman. For that, he was charged with reckless endangerment, in keeping with a court docket doc the woman’s mom shared with ProPublica and WPLN. Faculty officers responded by suspending Henderson for 2 days, in keeping with WSMV-TV, which obtained a disciplinary document that refers back to the weapon as a “field cutter.”
Two months after that, in December 2024, a person on X flagged considered one of Henderson’s accounts and tagged the FBI, encouraging the company to look into his connections with college shooters. Henderson’s accounts, which didn’t use his first or final identify, have been suspended in December and in January for violating “guidelines in opposition to perpetrators of violent assaults.” In class, his grades have been slipping. A trainer informed WSMV that Henderson was a “strolling crimson flag.”
On Jan. 22, Henderson got here to highschool with a pistol. He fired 10 pictures in 20 seconds within the cafeteria, killing 16-year-old Josselin Corea Escalante earlier than he turned the gun on himself.
It’s unclear what number of of Henderson’s crimson flags have been heeded. In response to questions on Henderson’s previous interactions with regulation enforcement, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Division declined to remark. When requested if the incident in Clarksville got here up throughout its investigations, a spokesperson indicated the division didn’t learn about it. And college officers declined to say whether or not they thought of incidents from his previous when figuring out his suspension, citing pupil confidentiality legal guidelines.
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Henderson’s suspension for threatening one other pupil with a weapon stands in stark distinction to different far harsher penalties college students have confronted beneath a sequence of lately handed state legal guidelines designed to stop college shootings and crack down on hoax threats. A 10-year-old who points a finger gun can get kicked out of faculty for a 12 months, and an 11-year-old who’s rumored to make a threat may be charged with a felony. Neither of these kids, or others whose punishments ProPublica and WPLN examined last year, introduced a weapon to highschool.
The woman Henderson threatened, Gemima, informed ProPublica and WPLN that she was stunned to see him within the hallways simply days after the incident. ProPublica and WPLN are utilizing simply her first identify as a result of she is a minor. “He had a complete knife at school, and he didn’t get expelled,” she stated. “It simply doesn’t sit proper with me.”
Lawmakers say that the tough punishments are needed to discourage college students from making hoax threats that frighten college students and lecturers and waste time and sources to analyze. However legal professionals and judges say the strategy floods the justice system with instances that could possibly be dealt with at college, making it more durable to give attention to the actual risks.
“Any time when you’ve got an inflow of instances which are threats or conversations that must be investigated, I feel it does take away worthwhile sources for the precise, actual instances that we’d like it for,” stated Decide Sheila Calloway of the Davidson County Juvenile Court docket.
State Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat and former particular training trainer, says Tennessee’s Republican supermajority ought to focus extra on implementing protections that may really assist cease mass shootings fairly than educating a lesson to children who haven’t any intention of carrying one out.
“Each time we attempt to provide you with one thing to stop these incidences, they’re not ,” Johnson stated. “However they’re taken with enhancing penalties and convicting 7-year-olds of felonies.”
Henderson had complained concerning the college students who had gotten in hassle for making threats at his college, anxious that the elevated police presence would get in the way in which of his planning. In an internet diary that he made public earlier than the capturing, he wrote that he would by no means have referred to as consideration to himself like different children have been, calling them “clowns.” As a way to perform an assault, he wrote, the attacker wanted the “aspect of shock.”
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First picture: Paige Pfleger/WPLN. Second picture: George Walker IV/AP Photograph.
Tennessee requires college officers and police to work collectively on “risk evaluation groups” to analyze instances the place college students present “harmful or threatening conduct.” They’re speculated to resolve issues earlier than they escalate to violence and decide whether or not troubled college students want extra sources like counseling or different psychological well being providers.
“Once you’re kids who might need behaviors which are regarding or different stressors occurring of their lives, we need to be capturing and digging into that instantly,” stated Melissa Nelson, a faculty security and safety marketing consultant who has educated 1000’s of faculty workers on managing threats.
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Faculty shooters normally plan their assaults prematurely, federal research shows, and most act out in regarding methods effectively earlier than they assault. When the method is working at its finest, risk evaluation groups can step in early to set college students on a greater path. If a child is appearing out as a result of he’s being bullied, for instance, the workforce may swap his lunch hour to separate him from the bully or assist mediate a greater relationship between the scholars. These interventions might not have been sufficient to discourage Henderson, however repeated contact and commentary over time he was within the district is taken into account finest observe by consultants.
Under state law, regulation enforcement and college districts don’t must publicly disclose their risk evaluation course of or how efficient it’s at stopping violence. Because of this, the general public has little transparency into what steps are being taken to maintain college students like Henderson from changing into the subsequent college shooter.
“After we aren’t utilizing evidence-based practices and we don’t have an excellent framework of particular issues we ought to be searching for,” Nelson stated, “then we do have a really excessive potential of lacking warning indicators.”
Metro Nashville Public Colleges declined to touch upon why they gave Henderson a two-day suspension as an alternative of a harsher punishment for pulling out a knife or whether or not they accomplished a risk evaluation. However in keeping with the district’s self-discipline chart, its colleges should not required to finish a risk evaluation for college students punished for reckless endangerment, which was what Henderson was charged with in court docket.
If college workers and police did full an evaluation, they might have been required to think about Henderson’s historical past of violence and threat of appearing aggressively sooner or later, in keeping with a duplicate of a risk evaluation questionnaire the district shared with ProPublica and WPLN. Additionally they would have needed to determine the right way to deal with any considerations that they had about Henderson, similar to monitoring his social media, randomly checking his backpack or locker and serving to him to get counseling.
Henderson’s on-line diary lends perception to warning indicators that officers might have missed. He wrote that police as soon as discovered a gun at his home that belonged to him, however his dad took the blame. He additionally wrote that his mother had been abusing him for years, together with placing a gun to his head when he was younger. ProPublica and WPLN made a number of makes an attempt to achieve Henderson’s dad and mom for remark however didn’t hear again.
The diary additionally revealed he was lively in on-line teams that glorified mass shooters and that he promoted racist, antisemitic, anti-LGBQT+ and violent misogynistic views. He wrote that he felt lonely at college and wished to stab his classmates to loss of life.
The best way the varsity district dealt with Henderson’s conduct has pissed off Gemima and her household. The household made the choice to not go to court docket within the case in opposition to Henderson — they wished the varsity to get him counseling or take away him to another college, and so they anxious about overly harsh punishment within the justice system. It’s a choice that her mother, Patricia Lerime, stated she now regrets.
“I ought to have gone to court docket,” she stated, mentioning that he might need been required to get assist. “However I felt like Metro failed him.”
Gemima recalled that when a faculty administrator confronted Henderson about threatening her with a knife, he started yelling at Gemima and referred to as her the N-word. Nobody informed her that he can be again at college days later. On the day of the capturing, she stated, it didn’t take lengthy for data to unfold amongst college students that Henderson was the assailant. It struck her, due to her historical past with Henderson, that she might have been considered one of his victims.
“Y’all failed me, and y’all failed everyone else within the college,” Gemima stated. “I simply really feel just like the scenario ought to have been dealt with in a different way.”
Mollie Simon of ProPublica and Phoebe Petrovic of Wisconsin Watch contributed analysis.
