Kelsea Ballerini Dedicates CMT Awards To Nashville Shooting Victims
Kelsea Ballerini started off the 2023 CMT Music Awards on a very emotional note. She opened the show tonight (4/2) wearing a black suit, and she paid tribute to the victims of the Nashville school shooting.
Looking straight into the camera, she said, “On March 27, 2023, Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs, along with Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, and Mike Hill, walked into The Covenant School and didn’t walk out.”
She tears up and continues, “The community of sorrow over this and the one hundred and thirty mass shootings in the U.S. this year alone stretches from coast to coast. I wanted to personally stand up and share this moment because, on August 22, 2008, I watched Ryan McDonald, my fifteen-year-old classmate at Central High School, lose his life to a gun in our cafeteria.”
Ballerini added in closing, “Tonight’s broadcast is dedicated to the ever-growing list of families, friends, survivors, witnesses, and responders whose lives continue to forever be changed by gun violence. I pray deeply that the closeness and the community that we feel through the next few hours of music can soon turn into action like real action that moves us forward together to create change for the safety of our kids and our loved ones.”
Reba, Kelsea Ballerini And More On Nashville Shooting
