Nashville school shooter praised Hitler in manifesto, planned to kill more

David Matthews, New York Daily News on Jan 23, 2025

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Authorities in Nashville are reviewing the online writings and social media of alleged high school shooter Solomon Henderson, who police say killed 16-year-old Josselin Corea Escalante before fatally shooting himself in the Antioch High School cafeteria on Wednesday.

One student suffered a graze wound while another suffered a facial injury but was not shot.

Police are still investigating whether the victims were targeted.

An online diary kept by the 17-year-old shooter included praise for mass murderers and a plan to kill “at least 10 people” in order to join their ranks, according to Nashville’s News Channel 5.

Henderson’s diary — described by the Anti-Defamation League as a “sprawling manifesto” filled with anti-Black racism and antisemitism — begins in October and allegedly details his “slipping” mental state as he feared “being fedded [stopped by law enforcement] before” his plan could come to fruition.

The diary reportedly includes photos of Adolf Hitler and selfies of Henderson, who is Black, making white-power gestures.

“I’m burning with hate,” Henderson wrote in his first entry. “Hate will change the world. Race mixing is a sin against God.”

“Only the ill mentally will praise me after my death and the only good n—-r is a dead n—-r, which includes me,” he also wrote.

Other revelations in the diary include information about Henderson’s social media accounts being suspended for praising acts of mass violence and other school shootings, including a massacre at a Nashville elementary school in 2023.

He wrote of his alleged steps toward building a bomb, thinking about killing his parents and setting up bombs at other schools as a diversion during his attack.

As “Day Zero” approached, Henderson described having to change his initial plans.

“Tomorrow is the day,” he wrote some time on Tuesday, along with a photo of himself in a Junior ROTC uniform. “I was planning on Thursday but I need to speed things up. I don’t have a lot of time. Holy s–t I’m nervous, scared and excited at the same time.”

According to the ADL, portions of the alleged manifesto were plagiarized from similar documents, including one written by the 2019 mass shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, and one from former UCLA philosophy professor Matthew Harris, who was arrested in 2022 after calling for violence against white and Jewish people.

The organization said it was an indication that Henderson was likely radicalized on the internet.

“These online spaces not only glorify violent fantasies, extremist ideologies, and mass killers but also fuel offline violence — acts that are often as incomprehensible as the ideologies that drive them,” Oren Segal, VP of the ADL Center on Extremism, said in a statement.

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