Park Cities Presbyterian Church Mourns Nashville Shooting Victims
Parishioners of Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCPC) gathered March 28 for a prayer service to remember the six people killed in a March 27 shooting at the Covenant School, a Presbyterian private school for children in preschool-sixth grades in the Nashville area. Two of the six people killed at the Covenant School had connections to PCPC.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said among those fatally shot were Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus, and William Kinney, all 9, and Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
Hallie was the daughter of Chad Scruggs, who served as a pastor at Park Cities Presbyterian Church from 2013 until 2018 when he became a pastor at Covenant. Hallie was born in 2013 and baptized in PCPC.
Members of the church community gathered for a prayer service March 28 in the church’s sanctuary. During the service, PCPC senior pastor Mark Davis said Peak, who was working as a substitute teacher at the Covenant School at the time of the shooting, was the sister of another PCPC member.
“We come today to do what the word of God calls us to; to grieve, to lament, to say nothing when there are no words,” Davis said. “This side of heaven, this is bitter, Lord, and it’s nothing less than that, so as we lift our voices in song, as we pray together with liturgy, as we gather in small groups in a moment just to pray whether silently or together out loud, draw near to us.”
During the opening of the March 28 service, Davis said he spoke with Chad shortly after the shooting.
“He was very conversive,” Davis said. “Admitting he’s in shock, that this is just surreal, but also admitting what he would admit not that many weeks ago from this pulpit; that the Lord is in control, that he is good, that he loves Hallie more than Jada [Scruggs] and I love Hallie.”
In addition to praying for the families of those killed in the shooting, the church also prayed for the family of the shooter, identified as Audrey Hale, 28, who was killed by police.
Nashville police said the shooter was a former student of the school, but it’s unclear if she had any current connections to it.
