The 17 -year -old Solomon Henderson entered Nashville High School on January 22 and took a gun. I was shot deadly A 16 -year -old girl before turning the gun directly.
A few weeks after the shooting, two reporters dug into the boy’s past and found some of the timely times when they grew up in Tennessee authorities. reporter, Aliya Sway Propublica PAIGE Nurse WPLN/Nashville Public Radio We organized a team by tracking Led to deadly shooting.
In this Q & A, Swaby and PFLEGER shares their stories and lessons learned in the process.
This conversation was edited for simplicity and clarity.
How did this story joined? Please guide the reporting process.
Nursery: It started on January 22 when WPLN’s newsroom was informed that there was a school shooting in Antioch High School. We had terrible news on that day, and after the tragedy, we began to talk about the bigger picture stories we could pursue. At that point, Aliyya and I have worked for almost a year of the story of Tennessee’s threat of mass violence, which actually casts a wide net and ties the children of the judicial system about the unbelievable threats. I talked about Aliyya and I talked about anti -tihochi, and in this case we wanted to understand what the red flags were missed and who missed it. The state is throwing the net wide, but how did this child caught?
How did the cooperation between you and your newsroom work?
Cotton swab: I started a project on how Tennessee, early last year, handled mass violence threats at school. As he began to ask for records of state and local institutions, Tennessee realized that the agency was one of the few states that could refuse the request of those without the main ID. So, I contacted Paeige to see if she could help me. We decided to click almost immediately and work beyond the record. PAIGE has been reporting youth justice and guns in Tennessee for many years and has been an educational journalist for more than 10 years. We were a dream team for this investigation.
Nursery: We even gave our name of our castle that combined our castle: Team Swager! As a local journalist, it is actually beneficial to cooperate with Propublica. There are many resources, databases and expertise in this type of investigation. Local, we have the power of wireless signals that reach our people, which helped to collect and build sources in Tennessee. It’s a really good game. With a more personal note, I learned a lot from seeing how to go to Aliyya. She is incredible. And we were lucky to share approaches to the same ethics, interviews and writing styles.
Your story records a lot of opportunities for law enforcement and school system to prevent Henderson’s shooting. A teacher said appropriately and he was a “walking bandit.” What are you reporting that part of the story?
Nursery: One of the most important parts of cooperation is that you can divide and conquer. When we wanted to see if there was a survey for the two, I started to ask for a record and Aliyya called. Mollie Simon, a research journalist at Propublica, has summarized background information about Henderson for about an hour, including his family’s past speeches in Clarksville. Therefore, we not only sent Nashville’s dispatch, police and school districts, but also sent a recording request from Clarksville. The tactics caused violent events between Henderson and his mother.
Aliya: Mollie also dug up Facebook posts after shooting and understood how the community members are talking about. Her background studies helped Henderson to lead Gemima, a girl who picked a knife from school. I explained her family and explained what we were doing and what we wanted to know, and they were happy. He also asked for a documentation to support the story. They shared the ruling that Henderson was charged with a reckless endangered crisis in the Youth Court and was a victim of the case. Gemima also shared Henderson’s photos in the cafeteria shortly after she threatened her and shared it with an administrator at that time. The metadata in this photo helped to mutually refer to the existing regional report and the date of incident on Henderson’s discipline.
nurse: After we have all of them, we have discovered everyone in the story that can help the context of judges, lawmakers, police, and schools. Through the process, we found that MNPD did not know about the Clarksville case.
Can you guide some of the ways to prevent violence in the same report, such as performing threats or connecting problems with problems? What should journalists who want to deal with this strategy know what to report on themselves?
Cotton swab: I talked with various threat evaluation experts from all over the country. They all criticized the state’s dependence on expulsions and arrests for threats, including incomprehensible threats.
Reporters who deal with this violence prevention strategy should understand that many school districts and law enforcement agencies have not been well implemented. The most difficult part of this point is to get detailed information about how this strategy helps or harms students at school. We were willing to share our stories and focused on finding a family that helped us to approach the records we did not get.
Nursery: We also wanted to keep in mind that we have the benefits of the hind foot. It is easy to look back on all these thinking and interpret it as a warning sign that this child will be a school shooter. However, the current law execution is handled when dealing with these events at the moment, and sometimes we do not connect the dots in the way we started. We wanted to make sure we kept the final story, and we thought it was clear about what we could do and not speak because the agency was responsible for knowing who and what they had.
This story is a strong example of a responsibility report that follows tragic news, such as mass shootings. How can this be important, and how can you affect your hope and explain such reports?
Nursery: Antioc was the second school shooting case I dealt with for four years I lived in Nashville. The first is a covenant school shooting case, with three children and three school staff. Due to the shooting, the Republican governor demanded a change in gun regulations. He and his wife were one of the adults who died that day. The legislature has a special session, but no gun reform has been passed. I have reported a lot Tennessee often responds to these firearms tragedies It is not easier for more people to have guns and not easier. The reality is that the gunfire and loose regulations of the gun here are at least now, at least now. Therefore, it is much more important to see how the gap in our system and how to improve the system to prevent the tragedy of the future.
Cotton swab: After the school shooting, what happened, the braking news about who was killed is absolutely important. But what I was trying to do here and I tried another question. Tennessee was able to do something else so that this work didn’t happen? Our report emphasized inconsistencies and defects to show that school shootings do not need to be ahead of the state’s approach to school violence.
