‘I’m a lot stronger’: Covenant School father reflects 7 months after deadly shooting

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Nick Cavuoto stands on the sidewalk of Burton Hills Boulevard in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, midway between the building where he shared an office and the school that was the site of a deadly shooting March 27, 2023.

“I can remember the whole thing vividly,” says the husband and father to four young children.

Each weekday morning before the Covenant School shooting, Cavuoto would drop off two of his children - ages 5 and 7 at the time - at Covenant School and drive about 100 yards to his office. He remembers the day of the shooting with great clarity.

“I dropped my kids off in the morning, and I remember saying to them ‘hey, go be leaders today,’” Cavuoto recalled.

By mid-morning, multiple phone calls from his wife caused concern.

“We have a rule where ‘if you call twice, then there’s something going on,’ and when I picked up the phone my wife said, ‘there’s a shooting at the Covenant School.’”

Cavuoto remembers sitting in disbelief in the moment but feeling a surge of energy.

“In that moment, I felt the adrenaline immediately come up,” Cavuoto said. “I remember swinging my door open, running down a hallway, and I get to the end of the hallway and there’s the elevator, and I’m smashing the elevator buttons trying to get downstairs as quickly as possible.”

Cavuoto made it from the 4th floor to the main entrance of the building. He details how he burst through the doors and sprinted the 100 yards to the driveway of the Covenant School.

“I could see the kids coming right down [the hill] and I saw my son from just down the way,” he said.

WSMV captured video of their reunion in the moments after the shooting. Cavuoto was seen hugging and talking with his son Jude, who is now 6 years old.

Because Cavuoto was one of the first parents on scene, he was allowed to ride on a school bus that transported the children from the school to Woodmont Baptist Church, which served as the reunification point for parents and students.

Cavuoto recalls feeling anger in the weeks and months after the shooting but delves deeper into the emotion.

“I think anger is the root of a lack of control. So, at any point that we experience anger, it’s because we can’t control something,” he said. “Unjust things happening in life are guaranteed, but where do we go when those things happen? And for me, as a father, I just believe that it’s my role to create that space for my kids.”

Cavuoto shared that time and therapy have helped his children heal from that fateful day.

“Do you think you’re different now than you were seven months ago?” WSMV Anchor Lauren Lowrey asked.

“I think I’m a lot stronger,” Cavuoto said. “I know that for me it’s been a journey of every single day. [There’s been] a lot of gratitude, holding space for my kids and asking the hard questions. You can’t change what happened. You can’t change what we experienced. But I’ll tell you that my kids are resilient. That they’re fighters. That they won’t be beneath something. That they will leverage it to its highest extent to make the world a better place.”

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