2025 Antioch High School Shooting

On January 22, 2025, Solomon Henderson (17) opened fire at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, killing student Josselin Corea Escalante (also called "Dayana") and wounding one other student before dying by suicide in the school hallway. Henderson left a manifesto that cited Maniac Murder Cult (MKY) as an ideological influence and named MKY leader Michail Chkhikvishvili by his alias "Commander Butcher." The Nashville Metropolitan Police Department conducted an investigation and issued an update in January 2026 concluding that Henderson had no co-conspirators and that there was no evidence of direct operational direction or coordination with MKY.¹

The Shooting

Henderson carried out the attack on January 22, 2025, at Antioch High School in the Antioch neighborhood of south Nashville. He killed Josselin Corea Escalante, a fellow student, and wounded one additional student before turning the weapon on himself. The attack was over within minutes of Henderson entering the school.

The manifesto Henderson left was recovered by law enforcement and analyzed for connections to known extremist networks. It explicitly cited MKY and named Chkhikvishvili, framing the attack in the language of MKY's "saint" tradition and indicating Henderson had consumed MKY content. At the time of the attack, Chkhikvishvili was awaiting extradition from Moldova on U.S. federal charges; he was extradited to the United States in May 2025 and pleaded guilty in November 2025.

Investigation and MKY Attribution

The ADL's analysis of the Antioch attack identified Henderson's manifesto as drawing from "broad extremist beliefs and previous mass killers," with MKY content among the influences. The investigation did not produce evidence that Henderson had been in direct contact with Chkhikvishvili or other MKY members.

Nashville MPD's January 2026 update explicitly addressed public speculation about MKY direction, concluding that Henderson acted alone and without co-conspirators. This places the Antioch attack in a category distinct from cases like the Aracruz, Brazil school shootings - where Dallas Humber had direct documented Telegram contact with the perpetrator in the month before the attack - and instead reflects MKY's reach through publicly circulated ideological content rather than operational mentorship.²