NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Nashville high school student who fatally shot a classmate before killing himself in January was on probation after threatening a student with a box cutter months earlier, according to juvenile court files obtained through an open records request.
Solomon Henderson, who was 17 at the time, was charged with carrying a weapon on school property with intent and reckless endangerment with a weapon after a confrontation on Oct. 24, 2024.
The victim said she was walking to lunch with a group when she said “hey” to Solomon. When he did not respond, she said “hey” again. Solomon, who is Black, then turned around and told her to get away, using an expletive, and called her the N-word, the victim told police. He pulled a box cutter out of his pocket and exposed the blade before walking to a table in the cafeteria and sitting down.
When an administrator confronted Solomon, “he became upset saying stuff like I’ll cut anyone that walks up on him,” according to the court filings. He also said he believed that the victim and her friends were going to jump him. As part of his probation, he was not allowed to possess guns.
Solomon’s juvenile record also includes charges from November 2023, when he was 16 years old, for downloading and distributing sexual images of minors. The record does not give any indication of the ages of the minors in the images. In that case, he was released to his parents with strict conditions including no use of social media, a cellphone, the internet, or a computer, with the exception of school work.
Juvenile court records have been unavailable to the public in Tennessee until recently. Citing the Antioch High School shooting and a desire to know more about the shooter’s history, Tennessee lawmakers this year passed a bill that allows someone’s juvenile court records to be made public if the person committed a homicide on school grounds and has died.
The records released to The Associated Press on Friday show that Solomon was given judicial diversion after his arrest for brandishing the box cutter. Court documents from the day after the incident indicated he was to have no contact with the victim and that his mother was planning to homeschool him.
It is unclear exactly when he returned to Antioch High School, but on Jan. 22, Solomon shot and killed Josselin Corea Escalante, who was 16 and Hispanic, in the school’s cafeteria before turning the gun on himself. Another student who was grazed by a bullet was treated and released from the hospital the same day.
Police said Henderson fired 10 shots from a 9 mm pistol within 17 seconds of entering the cafeteria. The pistol was loaded with nine rounds when recovered by police. The gun was bought by someone in Arizona in 2022, and it was not reported stolen, police said. The gun’s origins are still under investigation.
Although the name of the victim in the box-cutter incident is redacted from the juvenile records, police have previously said they could not establish a connection between Solomon and the victims in the shooting. They have said the gunfire may have been random.
Not long after the shooting, anti-hate analysts quickly identified dozens of pages believed to have come from Henderson, filled with calls for violence and racist comments, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies, expressions of shame that he was Black and praise for specific people who carried out well-known shootings. The writings also include plans for the school shooting, but they do not name Escalante as a target.
Police and the FBI have been investigating two documents totaling more than 300 pages combined that they believe Henderson created.
“It is clear that Henderson was significantly influenced by web-based material,” especially on “non-traditional sites that most would find harmful and objectionable,” police said.