Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale had a detailed, hand-drawn map of the school showing various entry points, Drake said. Hale was armed with two assault-style weapons, one of them a rifle and a 9mm pistol, According to authorities.
Nashville, Tennessee: In a video that was made public on Tuesday, police officers from Nashville, Tennessee, can be seen storming a private Christian elementary school on Monday before confronting and shooting the assailant, who then killed three students, age 9, and three members of the adult staff.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department released six minutes of terrifying video edited from the body-worn cameras of two responding officers. The video shows the cops emptying multiple first-floor classrooms before moving upstairs to the second level as a shooting was heard.
The suspect is seen slumping to the floor after being shot as the officers race down a hallway past what appears to be a victim who is lying on the ground.
Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a 28-year-old former Covenant School student, has been named by police as the shooter. To determine what sparked the most recent in a long line of mass shootings in the United States, investigators are looking at what they dubbed a “manifesto” that Hale left behind.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website by researcher David Riedman, Monday’s violence was the 90th school shooting in the United States this year. A school shooting is any occurrence where a gun is discharged on school property. The record, which dates back to 1970, shows that there were 303 such events last year, the most of any year.
Hale self-identified as transgender, according to Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake, who did not provide any additional context during an earlier press conference. Drake and other authorities frequently referred to the suspect as a woman, despite Hale’s use of male pronouns on a LinkedIn page listing recent jobs in grocery delivery and graphic design.
Drake claimed that Hale had a meticulous, hand-drawn map of the school that showed all of the entrances. According to authorities, Hale had two assault-style weapons, one of which was a rifle and a 9mm pistol.
Drake told NBC that according to the manifesto, Hale intended to carry out other shootings in different places. He claimed that although the Covenant School was specifically targeted, the individual victims were randomly picked.
Without going into further detail, Drake said that investigators think Hale had “some anger for having to go to that school” as a youngster.
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Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney were the three kids. The school’s principal, Katherine Koonce, 60, custodian, Mike Hill, 61, and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, were all also shot and killed.
Chad Scruggs, Scruggs’ father, is the nearby Covenant Presbyterian Church pastor. He added in a statement to ABC News that the family was devastated.
“Through tears, we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus, who will raise her to life once again,” the statement read.
‘GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM THE GUN!’
According to spokesperson Don Aaron, calls regarding a shooter started coming into Nashville police at 10:13 in the morning. By 10:27 a.m., the suspect had been pronounced dead.
“The police department response was swift,” Aaron said.
In contrast to videos showing Uvalde, Texas, officers waiting inside Robb Elementary School for more than an hour last May as a gunman inside a classroom continued an attack that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults, the body camera footage showed officers quickly searching for the shooter.
According to an inquiry by a state commission, several police officers dispatched to a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 chose to wait outside the structure rather than pursue the shooter right away. In that incident, seventeen staff members and students perished.
Both cases led to renewed questioning of police procedures for dealing with active shooters, which mandate that officers confront the perpetrator immediately to prevent casualties.
A staff member informs the officer at the beginning of the Nashville police video that the school has been shut down but that two children are missing. The cop then takes a rifle out of his boot.
“Let’s go! I need three!” Using a key to open a door and enter the building, where alarms can be heard ringing, the officer exclaims as he enters.
As they proceed through each room, the police can be seen passing past cubbies and bulletin boards on the footage. One of the officers remarks as they enter the second floor: “We’ve got one down,” before they sprint down the corridor to the gunman.
Officers Michael Collazo and Rex Engelbert fire numerous shots at the subject on tape, thanks to their body cams. The attacker can be seen moving on the ground in the video while another officer continually says, “Get your hands away from the gun!”
The gunman can be seen coming at the school and entering by firing through a glass door, according to previously disclosed CCTV footage from the police. The man, carrying a gun and entering rooms while emergency lights flash, is shown roaming through deserted halls while ostensibly hunting for individuals.
According to the school’s website, The Covenant School, established in 2001, educates roughly 200 children from preschool through sixth grade in the Green Hills district of the state capital of Tennessee.
