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Long before 17-year-old Solomon Henderson stepped into the school cafeteria with a gun, Tennessee officials were warned of his threatening and violent behavior.
In 2020, when he was 13, his mother called the police and told her he punched her in a chair after she asked him to clean the backyard. A hit. According to incident reports obtained through records requests by Propublica and WPLN News, officers at the Clarksville Police Department accused Henderson of a simple attack. No arrests have been reported previously.
In 2023, a Nashville police officer visited the family’s home and said he had removed two guns. A police spokesperson said the guns belong to the family’s adults, but the incident report could not be released as minors were involved in the visit.
A year later, at Antioch High School, Henderson pulled a knife on a 15-year-old girl. So he was charged with reckless danger, court documents show that the girl’s mother shares it with Propublica and WPLN. According to WSMV-TV, school officials responded by suspending Henderson for two days, according to a disciplinary record calling the weapon a “box cutter.”
Two months later, in December 2024, X users flagged one of Henderson’s accounts, tagged the FBI, and encouraged their agents to look into connections with school shooters. Henderson’s account did not use his original name or last name, but was suspended in December and January for violating “rules against perpetrators of violent attacks.” At school, his grades were slipping. The teacher told WSMV that Henderson was a “walking red flag.”
On January 22nd, Henderson came to school on a pistol. He fired 10 shots in 20 seconds at the cafeteria, killing 16-year-old Josselin Corea Escalante before pointing his gun.
It is unknown how many people in Henderson’s red flag listened. In response to questions about Henderson’s past interaction with law enforcement, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department declined to comment. When asked if the Clarksville incident came up during the investigation, the spokesman indicated that the department didn’t know about it. And school officials refused to say whether they considered cases from his past when deciding to cease student confidentiality laws.
Highlights of this series
Henderson’s suspension to threaten other students with weapons is something that students faced under a series of recently passed state laws designed to prevent school shootings and crack down on hoax threats. This is in stark contrast to the much more severe penalties. A 10-year-old, who refers to finger guns, could be kicked out of school for a year, and an 11-year-old who is rumored to pose a threat will be charged with a felony. Children tested by Propublica and WPLN last year, or other children whose punishments were tested last year, also did not bring weapons to school.
Jemima, the girl Henderson threatened, told Propoblica and WPLN that she was surprised to see him in the hallway a few days after the incident. Propublica and WPLN use only her name because she is a minor. “He had an entire knife at school and was not exiled,” she said. “It’s not sitting with me.”
Lawmakers say severe punishments are needed to stop students from terrifying students and teachers and stopping the threat of hoaxes that wastes time and resources on investigations. But lawyers and judges say this approach is flooding the judicial system with cases that can be handled at schools, making it difficult to focus on real dangers.
“Whenever there is an influx of cases that are threats or conversations that we have to investigate, I think it takes away the valuable resources of the actual real cases that we need,” Juvenile Court.
State Sen. Gloria Johnson, a former Democrat and special education teacher, said the vast majority of Republicans in Tennessee don’t teach lessons to kids who don’t intend to carry it, but actually stop mass shootings. He says they should focus more on implementing useful protections.
“Every time they try to come up with something to prevent these incidents, they’re not interested,” Johnson said. “However, they are interested in strengthening penalties and convicting a seven-year-old felony.”
Henderson complained about students who were troubled by committing threats at his school, but worried that the increase in police presence would get in the way of his plans. In an online diary released before filming, he wrote that he never called himself a “clown” like other children. He wrote that in order to make the attack, the attacker needed a “factor of surprise.”
Antioch High School first picture. Parents pray while waiting for their daughter following the school shooting in January. Credit: First Image: Paige Pfleger/wpln. Second image: George Walker IV/AP photo.
Tennessee is requiring school officials and police to cooperate with the “threat assessment team” to investigate cases where students exhibit “dangerous or threatening behavior.” They are supposed to resolve issues before escalating into violence and determine whether problem students need additional resources, such as counseling and other mental health services.
“When you see kids who may have behaviors happening in life or other stressors, we want to capture them and dig into them right away.” Thousands of threat management People’s school employees.
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School shooters usually plan their attacks in advance, federal research shows, and most act in pre-attack ways. If the process is working best, the threat assessment team can step in early and set students on a better path. For example, if a child is acting because he is being bullied, the team may switch lunchtimes to help them get away from the bullies or mediate better relationships between students. These interventions may not have been sufficient to stop Henderson, but repeated contact and observation over the years he was in the district are considered expert best practices.
Under state law, law enforcement and school districts do not need to publicly disclose how effective they are in stopping threat assessment processes and violence. As a result, the public has little transparency about what steps are being taken to ensure students like Henderson are not the next school shooter.
“If you’re not using evidence-based practices and don’t have a good framework for the specifics you’re looking for, it’s very likely that you’re missing warning signs,” Nelson said.
In place of the harsher punishment for pulling out the knife, Metronashville public schools declined to comment on why they gave Henderson a two-day suspension or whether they completed the threat assessment. However, according to the district’s discipline chart, the school does not need to complete a threat assessment of students who were punished for reckless danger, which is what Henderson was charged in court.
If school staff and police completed the assessment, they had to consider the history of Henderson’s violence and the risk of future positive actions, according to a copy of the threat assessment questionnaire they shared with Propobrica and WPLN. It must be. They would also have had to decide how to address concerns about Henderson, such as monitoring social media, random checking backpacks and lockers, and helping with counseling.
Henderson’s online diary gives warning signs insight that officials may have missed. He wrote that police found a gun in his home, where he belonged, but his father was responsible. He also writes that his mom had abused him for years, including putting a gun on his head when he was younger. Propublica and WPLN made multiple attempts to reach Henderson’s parents for comment, but they did not respond.
The diary also revealed that he actively praised the massive shooters in online groups, promoting racist, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBQT+ and violent misogyny. He wrote that he felt lonely at school and wanted to stab a classmate and die.
The way the school district handled Henderson’s actions has irritated Jemima and her family. The family decided not to go to court in the case against Henderson. They wanted the school to have him counsel and take him to an alternative school. It was a decision that her mom, Patricia Leleim, said she regrets in the future.
How many students have been expelled under the Tennessee School Threat Act? There is no clear answer.
“I should have gone to court,” she said. “But I felt like the Metro had failed him.”
Jemima recalls that when school administrators faced Henderson about threatening her with a knife, he began screaming at Jemima, calling her the n-word. Everyone told her he would return to his school days. On the day of the shooting, she said it wouldn’t take long to spread information among students that Henderson was the perpetrator. She attacked her because of her history with Henderson, saying she might have been one of his victims.
“Y’all failed me and everyone else in every school,” Gemima said. “I feel the situation should have been handled differently.”
Producer Molly Simon and Wisconsin Watch Phoebe Petrovich contributed to the research.
