Photo shows nonviolent protester in Oklahoma City, not Nashville, Tennessee, school shooter

A photo of a person holding a sign that features five pink, blue and white long guns sandwiched between the words, "trans rights … or else" circulated widely online following the deadly mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Several social media posts incorrectly identified the person holding the sign as the 28-year-old who officials said opened fire March 27 at the Christian elementary school, killing three children and three adults. 

One March 28 Facebook post included a screenshot of an Instagram post with the photo alongside the caption: "Nashville shooter, Audrey Hale."

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

(Screenshots from Twitter and Facebook.)

The person holding the sign in the photo is not the Nashville shooter.

The Instagram account that had been cited on Facebook updated its post and the caption now reads, "This is NOT the Nashville shooter," with the person’s face obscured. But that update has not prevented the previous false claim from continuing to spread.

The photo was taken at a nonviolent protest March 27 in Oklahoma City, according to news reports and a Twitter user, who goes by Chels on the platform, who claims to have taken the photo.

"This is false," Chels wrote in response to one incorrect tweet. "The person pictured in the photo on the left is NOT the shooter. I took the pic in OKC while the shooting was taking place in Nashville."

(Screenshot from Twitter.)

Chels told The Associated Press that she took the photo at about 11 a.m. Central Daylight Time. PolitiFact reached out to Chels via Twitter but did not hear back. 

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Police reported that law enforcement officers shot and killed the person who attacked The Covenant School by 10:27 a.m. Central Daylight Time.

The Associated Press reported that the Oklahoma City photo was taken during a protest dubbed "Bigotry is Bad for Business." Photos and videos from Oklahoma-based organizations, including Freedom Oklahoma and Oklahoma Progress Now corroborate that a pro-trans rights protest by that name happened March 27.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, 28, a former student of the school. The police also said that on social media, Hale identified as a transgender man. 

The person shown in the viral photo from the Oklahoma protest has not been identified.

Inaccurate claims about the photo circulated as news of Hale’s gender identity emerged and as anti-trans rhetoric intensified. Minutes after police said that the assailant was transgender, #TransTerrorism trended on Twitter, NBC News reported. 

We rate claims that a photo of a person holding a sign shows the person who attacked a Nashville elementary school False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.