“Sabrina, The Teenage Witch” actress Melissa Joan Hart fought back tears as she described on Instagram how she and her husband helped kindergarteners flee from a shooter in yet another heartbreaking shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, March 27.
The school shooting at the Covenant School claimed the lives of three nine-year-old students and three staff members.
Police later identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, 28, a former student at the school. She was eventually shot dead inside the school by responding police officers, at around 10:30 am.
Melissa Joan Hart shared her experience at the tragic shooting in an emotional video she posted on Instagram on Tuesday, March 28. She said that her three children attend the school right next to the one where the deadly rampage took place.
She said she and her husband had moved to Nashville from Connecticut, where her children were in a school a short distance from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 26 people, including 20 children and six adults, were shot dead in 2012.
This is the second time the actress’s children have been near a school shooting, fortunately without having first-hand experience of such a traumatic event.
Hart and her husband were going to their sons’ school to attend conferences and their kids were not in school on the day of the shooting next to their school, Hart said.
The actress’s voice breaks as she describes how they helped a class of kindergarteners cross a busy highway. She explained that the children were climbing out of the woods where they had been hiding from the shooter at their school.
Hart and her husband also helped reunite a mother with her children.
The actress captioned the video, “Prayers today, action tomorrow.”
According to police, the shooter, Hale, accessed the school on Monday morning carrying two assault rifles and one handgun. She fatally shot six victims before finally being gunned down by police about 14 minutes after the police got called into the school.
The victims were identified as William Kinney, Hallie Scruggs, and Evelyn Dieckhaus, all nine years old, Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60. The Nashville shooting is the third, and deadliest, school shooting since the start of this year.
