Actor and Tennessee resident Melissa Joan Hart described helping young children cross a highway near the Covenant School in Nashville where the latest U.S. mass shooting unfolded at the private elementary school on Monday.
It was Hart’s second traumatic experience with a shooting “in close proximity” to her children’s place of learning.
The “Clarissa Explains it All” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” star took to Instagram on Tuesday to share her emotional experience after a 28-year-old assailant left six people dead at the school, three of whom were 9-year-olds. Hart said her video “was too raw to post” on Monday but wanted her 1.7 million followers to “hear this story.”
“My kids go to school right next to a school where there was a shooting today,” Hart, 46, said in the video that she recorded Monday.
“We moved her from Connecticut, where we were in a school a little way’s down from Sandy Hook, so this is our second experience with a school with our kids being in close proximity. Luckily, we are all OK,” the mother of three added, referring to the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that claimed the lives of 20 children and several adults.
Hart said that she and her husband, Course of Nature musician Mark Wilkerson, were on their way to their kids’ school on Monday for parent-teacher conferences and ended up helping a class flee the shooting.
“We helped a class of kindergartners across a busy highway that were climbing out of the woods, that were trying to escape the shooter situation at their school,” Hart said, fighting back tears.
“So we helped all these tiny little … kids cross the road and get their teachers over there. And we helped a mom reunite with her children, and I don’t know what to say anymore. Enough is enough. And just pray, pray for the families.”
Several celebrities have spoken out in the wake of the latest tragedy. In a separate tweet, Hart tried to focus on being positive.
“Going into today declaring that the enemy will not fear,” she wrote Tuesday. “That fear will not win! That my kids are going to head to school with love in their hearts and appreciation for every breath they take and every face they see. Hug each other a little tighter today!”
In addition to the three children who died, the head of Covenant School, Katherine Koonce, 60; substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61; and custodian Mike Hill, 61, were also killed during the attack. Police believe that the shooter — who was identified as former student Audrey Hale — “randomly targeted” the six victims.
At a news conference Tuesday, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said authorities learned through interviews with the assailant’s parents that the shooter had legally purchased seven firearms from five local gun stores. Three were used in the attack at the school, Drake said.
The parents said the shooter was “under doctor’s care for emotional disorder,” Drake said. “Law enforcement knew nothing about the treatment [the shooter] was receiving, but the parents felt [the shooter] should not own weapons.”
Times staff writers Alexandra E. Petri and Terry Castleman contributed to this report.
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