By Jody Godoy

(Reuters) – U.S. criminal charges should be dropped against two former Societe Generale SA bankers for allegedly trying to rig the London interbank offered rate, prosecutors told a New York court on Wednesday.

Muriel Bescond, a former head of Societe Generale SA’s Treasury desk in Paris, and her boss Danielle Sindzingre, who was SocGen’s global head of treasury, were charged in 2017 with preparing inaccurate Libor submissions in 2010 and 2011.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace did not give reasons in the motion asking a judge in New York state’s Long Island to dismiss the case.

Bescond’s attorney Laurence Shtasel said “she looks forward to being relieved of this burden and moving forward with her professional life.”

Peace’s spokesperson declined to comment. A spokesman for the Department of Justice’s Washington-based Fraud Section, which led the Libor prosecutions, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An attorney representing Sindzingre did not reply to a similar request.

The move by prosecutors comes after court rulings undermined several cases alleging traders at the world’s largest financial institutions rigged the lending benchmark, which was phased out last year.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2021 that Bescond could fight the charges from France, rather than travel to the United States.

The same appeals court reversed the convictions of two Deutsche Bank AG traders last year and two London-based Rabobank traders in 2017.

Two Deutsche Bank traders who cooperated with prosecutors had their guilty pleas reversed by judges last August, and traders from other banks are seeking to do the same.

Libor-rigging investigations resulted in about $9 billion of fines worldwide for banks. SocGen agreed in June 2018 to pay $750 million of fines to settle U.S. criminal and civil Libor-rigging charges.

The case is U.S. v. Sindzingre et al., U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 17-00464.

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By Jonathan Allen and Brendan O’Brien

NASHVILLE (Reuters) -First lady Jill Biden joined a memorial vigil in Nashville on Wednesday for the three children and three adults shot to death this week at a Christian day school, including two educators who were close friends of the Tennessee governor’s wife.

The outdoor ceremony, attended by several hundred people, began about an hour before sunset in Nashville Public Square Park, outside city hall in the state capital, Tennessee’s largest city, and several miles from the scene of Monday’s massacre.

The service lasted only about 30 minutes, punctuated by prayers and performances from musicians Sheryl Crow, Margo Price and Ketch Secor.

The crowd sang along to Secor’s rendition of the popular Christian hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” as he accompanied himself on banjo.

The victims’ names were repeatedly recited during the tribute – 9-year-old students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, along with custodian Mike Hill, 61; the school’s headmaster, Katherine Koonce, 60; and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61.

“Think of all the hugs they would have had, and all the hugs we can still give each other,” said Mayor John Cooper, accompanied by numerous local leaders and clergy. “Nashville has had its worst day. Our hearts are broken.”

Cooper saluted police officers and other first-responders, for “rushing towards danger to save lives on our darkest day.”

The perpetrator of Monday’s carnage, former Covenant School student Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, was fatally shot by officers storming the building minutes after gunfire was first reported, likely preventing a higher death toll.

“Our police officers have cried and are crying with Nashville, and the world,” city Police Chief John Drake told mourners.

‘THERE IS PAIN’

Monday’s shooting, the latest of dozens in U.S. schools this year alone, has touched a particularly raw nerve, in part because three victims were so young and because it scorched Nashville’s tight-knit Christian community.

“Many Tennesseans are feeling the exact same way: The emptiness, the lack of understanding, the desperate desire for answers, the desperate need for hope,” said Tennessee Governor Bill Lee in a video posted on his Twitter feed.

Lee said both Koonce and Peak at one time had taught at the same school as his wife, Maria, and that the three remained close friends for decades. Lee said Peak and his wife had planned to dine together on Monday.

“I understand there is pain. I understand the desperation to have answers, to place blame, to argue about a solution that could prevent this horrible tragedy,” he said. “This is not a time for hate or rage.”

Some in extreme right-wing circles have seized on the case to vilify transgender people, after police said the shooter identified as transgender. It has since emerged that Hale was going by the name Aiden and using male pronouns on social media in recent months.

The shootings heightened anxiety in the LGBTQ community amid moves by Republican politicians in numerous states to outlaw gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, including a ban enacted recently in Tennessee.

SMALL ARSENAL AT HOME

Drake, the police chief, said investigators seeking clues to what precipitated the killings were examining maps and writings in a 60-page notebook found at Hale’s home. The writings suggested plans to carry out shootings at other locations, but authorities have yet to pinpoint a motive, Drake said.

The shooter was armed at the time of the attack with two assault-style weapons and a 9mm handgun, which police later found were among seven firearms that Hale had legally purchased in recent years.

While Hale targeted the school – housed in the Covenant Presbyterian Church and serving about 200 students from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade – the individual victims were slain at random, police have said.

In a CNN interview on Wednesday, Drake said it remained unclear what role, if any, Hale’s gender identity, religious beliefs or educational background played in the attack, stressing that the investigation was in its early stages. He said earlier this week that investigators believed Hale harbored some resentment at having attended Covenant as a child.

“There may have been some resentment. But we haven’t been able to confirm it,” Drake said on Wednesday. “As of right now, we don’t have any indication there was any problems at the school or home.”

Investigators are also looking at the mental health of the shooter, who was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder, Drake said.

As with most high-profile mass shootings, the latest attack has added fuel to a long-running national debate over gun ownership rights and regulations.

Tennessee does not require a permit to possess a firearm, regardless of whether it is concealed or openly carried.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Nashville and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in AtlantaWriting and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie AdlerEditing by Mark Porter and Matthew Lewis)

(Reuters) – A Florida board created to oversee Walt Disney World’s special taxation district is considering legal action after saying its power over the entertainment company’s resort has been eviscerated, a spokesperson for the district confirmed on Wednesday.

Florida lawmakers passed a bill in February giving Governor Ron DeSantis effective control over a board that oversees municipal services and development in a special district that encompasses Walt Disney World resort.

But before the takeover by DeSantis’s appointees, Walt Disney Co pushed through changes to the special tax district agreement that limit the board’s action for decades, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which quoted lawyers for the board who spoke at a meeting on Wednesday.

“It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern,” board member Brian Aungst Jr. was quoted as saying.

A spokesperson for the board said the supervisors characterized the prior board’s actions as an “eleventh hour” act that effectively ties their hands and limits their ability to do their jobs.

DeSantis’s press office could not be reached for comment, however his former press secretary, Christina Pushaw, tweeted that Disney “got a rude awakening” and would be held accountable.

Disney said its action was proper.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the district were appropriate and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” Walt Disney World resort said in a statement.

State Republicans last year targeted Disney after it publicly clashed with DeSantis, widely considered a 2024 presidential candidate, over a law that restricts classroom instruction of gender and sexual orientation.

Disney’s then-chief executive officer, Bob Chapek, publicly voiced disappointment with the measure, saying he called DeSantis to express concern about it becoming law.

In a move political observers viewed as retaliation for Disney’s criticism of the Parental Rights in Education Act, Florida lawmakers passed legislation that ended Disney’s virtual autonomy in developing 25,000 acres in central Florida where its theme parks are located.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski and Peter Henderson; Editing by Sonali Paul)

(Reuters) – A Florida board created to oversee Walt Disney World’s special taxation district is considering legal action after saying its power over the entertainment company’s resort has been eviscerated, a spokesperson for the district confirmed on Wednesday.

Florida lawmakers passed a bill in February giving Governor Ron DeSantis effective control over a board that oversees municipal services and development in a special district that encompasses Walt Disney World resort.

But before the takeover by DeSantis’s appointees, Walt Disney Co pushed through changes to the special tax district agreement that limit the board’s action for decades, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which quoted lawyers for the board who spoke at a meeting on Wednesday.

“It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern,” board member Brian Aungst Jr. was quoted as saying.

A spokesperson for the board said the supervisors characterized the prior board’s actions as an “eleventh hour” act that effectively ties their hands and limits their ability to do their jobs.

DeSantis’s press office could not be reached for comment, however his former press secretary, Christina Pushaw, tweeted that Disney “got a rude awakening” and would be held accountable.

Disney said its action was proper.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the district were appropriate and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” Walt Disney World resort said in a statement.

State Republicans last year targeted Disney after it publicly clashed with DeSantis, widely considered a 2024 presidential candidate, over a law that restricts classroom instruction of gender and sexual orientation.

Disney’s then-chief executive officer, Bob Chapek, publicly voiced disappointment with the measure, saying he called DeSantis to express concern about it becoming law.

In a move political observers viewed as retaliation for Disney’s criticism of the Parental Rights in Education Act, Florida lawmakers passed legislation that ended Disney’s virtual autonomy in developing 25,000 acres in central Florida where its theme parks are located.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski and Peter Henderson; Editing by Sonali Paul)

By Julia Harte and Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) -Security consultant Brink Fidler led the staff at the Covenant School in Nashville through mass shooter training in early 2022, teaching them escape and lockdown skills and medical trauma preparation.

On Wednesday, two days after a 28-year-old former student opened fire inside the private Christian academy, Fidler said he saw signs that the teachers had implemented his advice.

Walking through the grade school with police detectives, Fidler noted that teachers had covered the windows and turned out the lights. He saw a medical bag on a desk, ready to be used. Those who could safely get out had evacuated with their students, while others appeared to have locked down and hidden from the shooter.

“They followed every protocol we talked about,” Fidler, a former police officer, said in a telephone interview after helping police understand what preparations the school had taken. “They were saving those kids’ lives.”

Despite Covenant School’s planning, the assailant entered the stately stone building by shooting the glass out of several doors. The attacker then killed three 9-year-old students and three adults before police stopped the assault by fatally shooting the 28-year-old.

The rampage has U.S. educators grappling once again with how to bolster their defenses against such a threat, particularly at smaller independent schools often viewed as havens of safety.

It was a reminder that any campus could be the target of gun violence, spurring educators around the country to review security protocols and try to reassure parents.

“There’s been a sense of, ‘Those problems don’t seem to happen in our types of schools,’ and (Monday) shattered that,” said Sean Corcoran, head of school at Brainerd Baptist School, an elementary school of 330 students attached to a church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Corcoran said Brainerd’s glass doors were coated in bullet-resistant laminate; it holds several active shooter drills a year; and the local police station can access security camera feeds during emergencies. The school is also installing panic buttons.

But he said the Covenant School shooting exposed how deadly such attacks can be even when school leaders “did everything right.”

Security experts who watched publicly released security camera and body camera video from Monday’s shooting said the Covenant School appeared to have good safety protocols. The school, which serves about 200 students from preschool to sixth grade, kept its doors locked and evacuated students quickly so hallways would be mostly empty when the shooter reached them.

They said additional safety measures might have helped. If the school doors had been coated in bullet-resistant laminate, it might have taken the shooter six or seven minutes to enter, buying additional time for law enforcement to respond, said Mac Hardy, director of operations at the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Fidler said the school had planned to add a protective laminate layer to the glass door panels but it hadn’t yet been installed. School officials could not be reached for comment.

GUARDS AND GATES

Hardy said Covenant did not have a school resource officer whose purpose is to avert or respond to threats such as active shooters.

In parts of the United States, law enforcement and school resource officers were pulled off campuses in 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a shift to virtual learning, and also in the wake of protests against police violence that swept the country that year, according to Chris Joffe, a security, safety and medical support consultant.

His company, Joffe Emergency Services, holds disaster and threat-preparedness training for schools around the country and has heard from hundreds of schools since Monday’s attack, Joffe said.

An armed guard is stationed at the front gate at Briarcrest Christian School in the Memphis suburbs, according to an email on Tuesday to parents of its approximately 1,750 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and off-duty local police officers patrol campus during school hours.

Perimeter fencing surrounds the campus and gates are locked after children are dropped off each morning.

“We operate on the premise of, put as many barriers up as you can before an intruder can get into your school,” said Briarcrest’s president, Caron Swatley.

It is not clear that hardening school security always works. A study published in an American Medical Association online journal in 2021 showed armed guards at a school site did not reduce the number of casualties in a shooting and may even be associated with an increased number of deaths.

Ron Avi Astor, a University of California, Los Angeles professor who studies school violence, said schools need to strike a balance between adopting measures to keep kids safe and doing so much that school feels like prison.

He said small schools in vulnerable Jewish and Muslim communities have created subtle barriers to entry, such as erecting fencing and moving entrances to the back of their properties, allowing schools to protect children without traumatizing them.

“There are choices that can be made here, maybe some middle ground,” Astor said. “Yes we want to protect them, but do we want to create environments where they feel like there’s tanks and bazookas everywhere?”

(Reporting by Julia Harte and Sharon BernsteinEditing by Colleen Jenkins, David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)

By David Shepardson and Hilary Russ

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Starbucks’ former Chief Executive Howard Schultz defended himself and the coffee chain against allegations of “union busting” at a U.S. Senate committee hearing in Washington on Wednesday.

The Seattle-based company has previously denied allegations that it illegally fired pro-union baristas or spied on workers as hundreds of U.S. stores organized unions starting in late 2021.

It also says it did not violate federal labor law by offering some new benefits – including higher wages, student loan repayment tools, and a savings account program – only to non-unionized stores, as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has alleged.

Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, told Schultz that “Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union busting campaign in the modern history of our country.”

“These are allegations and Starbucks has not broken the law,” Schultz told Sanders during the hearing.

Starbucks’ shares closed up 1.93% at $100.62 as restaurant stocks ended broadly higher. Analysts at two Wall Street firms, TD Cowen and BTIG, reiterated their high ratings for the company and said respectively that the hearing was a “non-event” and “accomplished little.”

Schultz, who left his third stint as CEO on March 20, said he did not have any direct role in firing workers who supported the union or closing unionized stores. He remains on the company’s board.

His return to Starbucks as its interim leader in April 2022 was “95% focused on the operations of the business” and his involvement in the company’s union strategy has been “de minimis,” Schultz said.

Republicans defended Schultz, praising the company’s competitive wages, health benefits, employee stock purchase program and other benefits.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney noted “some irony to a non-coffee-drinking Mormon conservative defending a Democrat candidate for president in perhaps one of the most liberal companies in America.”

Other senators questioned why it was taking so long for Starbucks to reach contracts with its stores in Buffalo, New York, which were the first in the United States to unionize.

“The delay is truly unacceptable,” Senator Maggie Hassan said.

But the company and union disagree over whether negotiation sessions can be conducted via Zoom video calls.

Schultz reiterated that the company has “shown up about 85 times to have a face-to-face meeting” and tried to set up 365 additional meetings.

“We are ready and able to have face-to-face negotiations, and will do so at a moment’s notice,” he said.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ in New York and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Jonathan Oatis)

By Andrew Hay

(Reuters) -The New Mexico district attorney who charged actor Alec Baldwin for the shooting death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins said on Wednesday she would step down as a prosecutor on the case, marking another win for defense lawyers.

First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said in a statement she was passing prosecution of the case over to long-time New Mexico lawyers Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis.

Just five weeks before a high-profile preliminary hearing, the Albuquerque attorneys will take over the case as special prosecutors.

Carmack-Altwies is the second prosecutor to resign from a legal team in the case, which has been beset by errors since Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed were charged in January for the death of the rising-star cinematographer.

A previous special prosecutor, Andrea Reeb, a Republican state representative, stepped down on March 15 after Baldwin’s lawyers argued it was unlawful for her to serve as a member of the state judiciary and legislature at the same time.

Lawyers for Gutierrez-Reed this month filed a motion to stop Carmack-Altwies acting as a co-prosecutor in the case, arguing that she could not appoint a new special prosecutor and continue to take part in the prosecution herself.

District court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer agreed, giving the district attorney until Friday to make a decision.

“Carmack-Altwies will step aside from personally prosecuting the ‘Rust’ case, allowing her to focus on the broader public safety needs in New Mexico’s First Judicial District,” said Heather Brewer, a spokeswoman for the district attorney.

At a hearing starting May 3 Sommer will decide if there is probable cause to try Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin on criminal charges that require prosecutors prove the pair showed intentional disregard for Hutchins’ safety.

Both were charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, the most serious of which was subsequently dropped after Baldwin’s lawyers found the law underpinning it was passed after Hutchins was shot.

Baldwin has pleaded not guilty and Gutierrez-Reed is expected to do the same.

Hutchins was killed and “Rust” director Joel Souza wounded on the film set on Oct. 21, 2021 when a revolver Baldwin was rehearsing with fired a live round.

Dave Halls, first assistant director on “Rust, was the only member of the cast and crew charged for Hutchins’ death to enter a guilty plea.

At a 4 p.m. ET (2000 GMT) hearing on Friday Sommer will consider a plea deal he reached with prosecutors for a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.

(Reporting By Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Leslie Adler, Cynthia Osterman and Sandra Maler)

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -A Black former elevator operator at Tesla Inc’s flagship California assembly plant became emotional testifying at a trial on Wednesday about the psychological toll exacted on him by a torrent of racial slurs, threats and other workplace incidents.

The plaintiff, Owen Diaz, struggled to speak at times during his testimony, including when he explained how he had recorded Spanish-speaking coworkers and later discovered using a translation website that they were calling him racial slurs.

Diaz said that racial incidents at the Fremont, California, electric-vehicle factory strained his relationship with his son, who also worked there, and have made it difficult for him to trust people.

“It made me feel less than a man (and) it made me question my worth,” Diaz said. He added: “I was living from paycheck to paycheck and I needed the job.”

At one point, U.S. District Judge William Orrick called a 15-minute recess in order for Diaz to compose himself.

Lawyers for Tesla will complete their cross-examination of Diaz on Thursday.

Alex Spiro, who represents the company, on Wednesday pressed Diaz on why there was no record of him making written complaints to supervisors, such as emails and text messages, about racist conduct.

Diaz said he did not recall whether he complained in writing or only verbally, and in a series of testy exchanges accused Spiro of mischaracterizing his responses to other questions.

The five-day trial on damages comes after a jury in 2021 found Tesla liable for discrimination and ordered the company to pay Diaz $137 million. The trial began on Monday.

Orrick last year agreed with the jury that the EV maker had fostered a hostile work environment but slashed the award to $15 million. Diaz rejected the lower payout and opted for a new trial on damages before a different jury.

Bernard Alexander, a lawyer for Diaz, during opening statements on Monday compared the Fremont plant to a “plantation” where Black workers were targeted for harassment and their complaints were ignored by managers.

Tesla has maintained that it does not tolerate workplace harassment and takes discrimination complaints seriously. Spiro told jurors on Monday that Diaz was exaggerating his claims of emotional distress and there was no evidence warranting a multimillion-dollar award.

Jurors have also heard testimony from five workers and supervisors at the Fremont plant, a Tesla human resources manager and a lawyer who conducts investigations into workplace disputes and served as an expert witness for Diaz.

The lawyer testified that while Tesla had adopted adequate anti-bias policies, the company failed to properly investigate and respond to complaints from Diaz and other Black workers.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New YorkEditing by Matthew Lewis)

By Julia Harte and Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) -Security consultant Brink Fidler led the staff at the Covenant School in Nashville through mass shooter training in early 2022, teaching them escape and lockdown skills and medical trauma preparation.

On Wednesday, two days after a 28-year-old former student opened fire inside the private Christian academy, Fidler said he saw signs that the teachers had implemented his advice.

Walking through the grade school with police detectives, Fidler noted that teachers had covered the windows and turned out the lights. He saw a medical bag on a desk, ready to be used. Those who could safely get out had evacuated with their students, while others appeared to have locked down and hidden from the shooter.

“They followed every protocol we talked about,” Fidler, a former police officer, said in a telephone interview after helping police understand what preparations the school had taken. “They were saving those kids’ lives.”

Despite Covenant School’s planning, the assailant entered the stately stone building by shooting the glass out of several doors. The attacker then killed three 9-year-old students and three adults before police stopped the assault by fatally shooting the 28-year-old.

The rampage has U.S. educators grappling once again with how to bolster their defenses against such a threat, particularly at smaller independent schools often viewed as havens of safety.

It was a reminder that any campus could be the target of gun violence, spurring educators around the country to review security protocols and try to reassure parents.

“There’s been a sense of, ‘Those problems don’t seem to happen in our types of schools,’ and (Monday) shattered that,” said Sean Corcoran, head of school at Brainerd Baptist School, an elementary school of 330 students attached to a church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Corcoran said Brainerd’s glass doors were coated in bullet-resistant laminate; it holds several active shooter drills a year; and the local police station can access security camera feeds during emergencies. The school is also installing panic buttons.

But he said the Covenant School shooting exposed how deadly such attacks can be even when school leaders “did everything right.”

Security experts who watched publicly released security camera and body camera video from Monday’s shooting said the Covenant School appeared to have good safety protocols. The school, which serves about 200 students from preschool to sixth grade, kept its doors locked and evacuated students quickly so hallways would be mostly empty when the shooter reached them.

They said additional safety measures might have helped. If the school doors had been coated in bullet-resistant laminate, it might have taken the shooter six or seven minutes to enter, buying additional time for law enforcement to respond, said Mac Hardy, director of operations at the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Fidler said the school had planned to add a protective laminate layer to the glass door panels but it hadn’t yet been installed. School officials could not be reached for comment.

GUARDS AND GATES

Hardy said Covenant did not have a school resource officer whose purpose is to avert or respond to threats such as active shooters.

In parts of the United States, law enforcement and school resource officers were pulled off campuses in 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a shift to virtual learning, and also in the wake of protests against police violence that swept the country that year, according to Chris Joffe, a security, safety and medical support consultant.

His company, Joffe Emergency Services, holds disaster and threat-preparedness training for schools around the country and has heard from hundreds of schools since Monday’s attack, Joffe said.

An armed guard is stationed at the front gate at Briarcrest Christian School in the Memphis suburbs, according to an email on Tuesday to parents of its approximately 1,750 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and off-duty local police officers patrol campus during school hours.

Perimeter fencing surrounds the campus and gates are locked after children are dropped off each morning.

“We operate on the premise of, put as many barriers up as you can before an intruder can get into your school,” said Briarcrest’s president, Caron Swatley.

It is not clear that hardening school security always works. A study published in an American Medical Association online journal in 2021 showed armed guards at a school site did not reduce the number of casualties in a shooting and may even be associated with an increased number of deaths.

Ron Avi Astor, a University of California, Los Angeles professor who studies school violence, said schools need to strike a balance between adopting measures to keep kids safe and doing so much that school feels like prison.

He said small schools in vulnerable Jewish and Muslim communities have created subtle barriers to entry, such as erecting fencing and moving entrances to the back of their properties, allowing schools to protect children without traumatizing them.

“There are choices that can be made here, maybe some middle ground,” Astor said. “Yes we want to protect them, but do we want to create environments where they feel like there’s tanks and bazookas everywhere?”

(Reporting by Julia Harte and Sharon BernsteinEditing by Colleen Jenkins, David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)

By Jonathan Allen and Brendan O’Brien

NASHVILLE (Reuters) -First lady Jill Biden joined a memorial vigil in Nashville on Wednesday for the three children and three adults shot to death this week at a Christian day school, including two educators who were close friends of the Tennessee governor’s wife.

The outdoor ceremony, attended by several hundred people, began about an hour before sunset in Nashville Public Square Park, outside city hall in the state capital, Tennessee’s largest city, and several miles from the scene of Monday’s massacre.

The service lasted only about 30 minutes, punctuated by prayers and performances from musicians Sheryl Crow, Margo Price and Ketch Secor.

The crowd sang along to Secor’s rendition of the popular Christian hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” as he accompanied himself on banjo.

The victims’ names were repeatedly recited during the tribute – 9-year-old students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, along with custodian Mike Hill, 61; the school’s headmaster, Katherine Koonce, 60; and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61.

“Think of all the hugs they would have had, and all the hugs we can still give each other,” said Mayor John Cooper, accompanied by numerous local leaders and clergy. “Nashville has had its worst day. Our hearts are broken.”

Cooper saluted police officers and other first-responders, for “rushing towards danger to save lives on our darkest day.”

The perpetrator of Monday’s carnage, former Covenant School student Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, was fatally shot by officers storming the building minutes after gunfire was first reported, likely preventing a higher death toll.

“Our police officers have cried and are crying with Nashville, and the world,” city Police Chief John Drake told mourners.

‘THERE IS PAIN’

Monday’s shooting, the latest of dozens in U.S. schools this year alone, has touched a particularly raw nerve, in part because three victims were so young and because it scorched Nashville’s tight-knit Christian community.

“Many Tennesseans are feeling the exact same way: The emptiness, the lack of understanding, the desperate desire for answers, the desperate need for hope,” said Tennessee Governor Bill Lee in a video posted on his Twitter feed.

Lee said both Koonce and Peak at one time had taught at the same school as his wife, Maria, and that the three remained close friends for decades. Lee said Peak and his wife had planned to dine together on Monday.

“I understand there is pain. I understand the desperation to have answers, to place blame, to argue about a solution that could prevent this horrible tragedy,” he said. “This is not a time for hate or rage.”

Some in extreme right-wing circles have seized on the case to vilify transgender people, after police said the shooter identified as transgender. It has since emerged that Hale was going by the name Aiden and using male pronouns on social media in recent months.

The shootings heightened anxiety in the LGBTQ community amid moves by Republican politicians in numerous states to outlaw gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, including a ban enacted recently in Tennessee.

SMALL ARSENAL AT HOME

Drake, the police chief, said investigators seeking clues to what precipitated the killings were examining maps and writings in a 60-page notebook found at Hale’s home. The writings suggested plans to carry out shootings at other locations, but authorities have yet to pinpoint a motive, Drake said.

The shooter was armed at the time of the attack with two assault-style weapons and a 9mm handgun, which police later found were among seven firearms that Hale had legally purchased in recent years.

While Hale targeted the school – housed in the Covenant Presbyterian Church and serving about 200 students from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade – the individual victims were slain at random, police have said.

In a CNN interview on Wednesday, Drake said it remained unclear what role, if any, Hale’s gender identity, religious beliefs or educational background played in the attack, stressing that the investigation was in its early stages. He said earlier this week that investigators believed Hale harbored some resentment at having attended Covenant as a child.

“There may have been some resentment. But we haven’t been able to confirm it,” Drake said on Wednesday. “As of right now, we don’t have any indication there was any problems at the school or home.”

Investigators are also looking at the mental health of the shooter, who was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder, Drake said.

As with most high-profile mass shootings, the latest attack has added fuel to a long-running national debate over gun ownership rights and regulations.

Tennessee does not require a permit to possess a firearm, regardless of whether it is concealed or openly carried.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Nashville and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in AtlantaWriting and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie AdlerEditing by Mark Porter and Matthew Lewis)