Many broke down in tears at the emotional gathering on Wednesday (Picture: Reuters)
Hundreds have gathered at a candlelight vigil in Nashville to mourn the three children and three adults killed in a devastating shooting at a Christian school.
Victim Mike Hill’s seven children and other family members were in the crowd on Wednesday night as the city united to honour those slain by attacker Audrey Hale.
First Lady Jill Biden attended and was seen bowing her head during the highly emotional downtown ceremony.
Nashville local Sheryl Crow performed I Shall Believe and ended with the lyrics from a Dionne Warwick song: ‘What the world needs now is love, sweet love.’
A huge crowd came together to mourn (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)
US First Lady Jill Biden holds a candle and listens to speeches (Picture: Reuters)
The gathering was highly emotional (Picture: EPA)
Crowd members listened as Sheryl Crow told them ‘what the world needs now is love, sweet love’ (Picture: Reuters)
Margo Price also sang a cappella version of Tears of Rage before Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show led the crowd in the Christian hymn, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.
Many became tearful as speaker after speaker read the names of the victims.
Schoolchildren Hallie Scruggs, 9, Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, and William Kinney, 9, had their lives ripped away from them at The Covenant School on Monday.
Headteacher Dr. Katherine Koonce, 60, and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, were also killed alongside custodian Mr Hill, 61.
Mayor John Cooper described the massacre as ‘our city’s worst day’, adding: ‘I so wish we weren’t here, but we need to be here.’
Shaundelle Brooks, who lost her son, Akilah Dasilva, 23, in the 2018 Nashville Waffle House shooting, went to the vigil to support the victim’s families.
‘I know what it’s like to be a parent – what it feels like, like you’re drowning and can’t move, and that weakness and that hole that comes in your stomach’, she said.
The shooting on Monday has left the city shaken (Picture: Reuters)
Ms Biden stands with officials (Picture: Reuters)
The shooting is unlikely to move the political needle on gun regulation in Tennessee as Republicans bat away Democrat calls for strict new legislation.
There was no mention of gun control at the vigil, as people steered clear of the political divide between blue-leaning Nashville and ruby-red Tennessee and stood together in remembrance.
Hale, a former student at the school, was shot dead by police after blasting through a locked glass door onsite and indiscriminately firing an assault rifle.
He had legally bought seven guns over the last few years and hid them from his parents.
Police say he was under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed emotional disorder, but he was not known to authorities before the attack.
A motive for the killings has not been given, but Nashville Police Chief John Drake told NBC News that investigators believed Hale, who was transgender, harboured ‘some resentment’ for being forced to go to the Christian school as a child.
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Many mourners broke down in tears at the highly emotional gathering.