Lengthy earlier than 17-year-old Solomon Henderson walked into his college cafeteria with a gun, authorities in Tennessee had been alerted to his threatening and violent habits.

In 2020, when he was 13, his mother known as the police, saying he punched her within the face and tried to hit her with a chair after she requested him to scrub 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 way of a information request. The arrest has not been beforehand reported.

In 2023, Nashville cops visited the household’s dwelling and stated they eliminated two weapons. A Police Division spokesperson stated the weapons belonged to adults within the dwelling, however the incident report couldn’t be launched as a result of the go to concerned a minor.

At Antioch Excessive College a yr later, Henderson pulled a knife on a 15-year-old woman. For that, he was charged with reckless endangerment, in keeping with a courtroom doc the woman’s mom shared with ProPublica and WPLN. College officers responded by suspending Henderson for 2 days, in keeping with WSMV-TV, which obtained a disciplinary report that refers back to the weapon as a “field cutter.”

Two months after that, in December 2024, a person on X flagged one in all 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 title, had been suspended in December and in January for violating “guidelines in opposition to perpetrators of violent assaults.” At school, his grades had been slipping. A instructor advised WSMV that Henderson was a “strolling pink flag.”

On Jan. 22, Henderson got here to high school with a pistol. He fired 10 photographs 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 pink flags had been heeded. In response to questions on Henderson’s previous interactions with legislation 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 find out about it. And faculty officers declined to say whether or not they thought-about incidents from his previous when figuring out his suspension, citing pupil confidentiality legal guidelines.

Henderson’s suspension for threatening one other pupil with a weapon stands in stark distinction to different far harsher penalties college students have confronted below a sequence of lately handed state legal guidelines designed to stop college shootings and crack down on hoax threats. A ten-year-old who factors a finger gun can get kicked out of faculty for a yr, and an 11-year-old who’s rumored to make a menace could be charged with a felony. Neither of these youngsters, or others whose punishments ProPublica and WPLN examined final yr, introduced a weapon to high school.

The woman Henderson threatened, Gemima, advised 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 title as a result of she is a minor. “He had an entire knife at school, and he didn’t get expelled,” she stated. “It simply doesn’t sit proper with me.”

Lawmakers say that the cruel punishments are vital to discourage college students from making hoax threats that frighten college students and academics and waste time and assets to analyze. However attorneys and judges say the strategy floods the justice system with instances that may very well be dealt with in school, making it more durable to give attention to the actual risks.

“Any time when you have got an inflow of instances which might be threats or conversations that must be investigated, I feel it does take away beneficial assets 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 instructor, says Tennessee’s Republican supermajority ought to focus extra on implementing protections that may truly assist cease mass shootings quite than educating a lesson to children who don’t have 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 involved in enhancing penalties and convicting 7-year-olds of felonies.”

Henderson had complained in regards to the college students who had gotten in bother for making threats at his college, frightened that the elevated police presence would get in the best way of his planning. In an internet diary that he made public earlier than the taking pictures, he wrote that he would by no means have known as consideration to himself like different children had been, calling them “clowns.” To be able to perform an assault, he wrote, the attacker wanted the “component of shock.”

Tennessee requires college officers and police to work collectively on “menace evaluation groups” to analyze instances the place college students present “harmful or threatening habits.” They’re speculated to resolve issues earlier than they escalate to violence and decide whether or not troubled college students want extra assets like counseling or different psychological well being companies.

“While you’re youngsters who might need behaviors which might be regarding or different stressors occurring of their lives, we need to be capturing and digging into that immediately,” stated Melissa Nelson, a college security and safety marketing consultant who has educated 1000’s of faculty workers on managing threats.

College shooters normally plan their assaults prematurely, federal analysis reveals, and most act out in regarding methods nicely earlier than they assault. When the method is working at its greatest, menace evaluation groups can step in early to set college students on a greater path. If a child is performing 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 could not have been sufficient to discourage Henderson, however repeated contact and remark over time he was within the district is taken into account greatest apply by consultants.

Below state legislation, legislation enforcement and college districts don’t must publicly disclose their menace evaluation course of or how efficient it’s at stopping violence. In consequence, the general public has little transparency into what steps are being taken to maintain college students like Henderson from turning into the subsequent college shooter.

“Once we aren’t utilizing evidence-based practices and we don’t have an excellent framework of particular issues we needs to be on the lookout for,” Nelson stated, “then we do have a really excessive potential of lacking warning indicators.”

Metro Nashville Public Faculties 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 menace evaluation. However in keeping with the district’s self-discipline chart, its faculties will not be required to finish a menace evaluation for college students punished for reckless endangerment, which was what Henderson was charged with in courtroom.

If college workers and police did full an evaluation, they’d have been required to contemplate Henderson’s historical past of violence and threat of performing aggressively sooner or later, in keeping with a replica of a menace evaluation questionnaire the district shared with ProPublica and WPLN. Additionally they would have needed to resolve find out how to tackle any considerations that they had about Henderson, resembling 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 could 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 energetic 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 in school and wished to stab his classmates to dying.

The way in which the college district dealt with Henderson’s habits has annoyed Gemima and her household. The household made the choice to not go to courtroom within the case in opposition to Henderson — they wished the college to get him counseling or take away him to an alternate college, and so they frightened 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 courtroom,” she stated, mentioning that he might need been required to get assist. “However I felt like Metro failed him.”

Gemima recalled that when a college administrator confronted Henderson about threatening her with a knife, he started yelling at Gemima and known as her the N-word. Nobody advised her that he could be again in school days later. On the day of the taking pictures, 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 may have been one in all 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.”