On Tuesday, Nashville authorities released graphic footage showing confrontations between both police and an armed assailant, a woman who attacked an elementary school on Monday morning.
Six people (three children and three adults) died in the shooting and the attacker was killed by police minutes after the call was made by the shooter.
Audrey Hale who police identified as the shooter, had bought seven firearms legally including three guns which was used in the attack and is in treatment for emotional disorder.
The shooting was at the Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school on the grounds of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville’s Green Hills neighborhood.
“Our community is heartbroken,” the school mentioned on Monday. “We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of terror that shattered our school and church.”
Messages of sympathy across the country were spread even President Biden and Congress are to do more to prevent more school shootings. There have been 130 U.S. school shootings this year.
The call was at 10:30am that an active shooter was at the school. Hale was 28-years old and was a former student of the school. Authorities say that Hale was a woman but used he/him pronouns. There’s footage of Hale driving to the school and driving around the parking lot while kids were playing outside for recess. Hale is seen wearing camouflage-style pants, a white t-shirt, a red cap, and a black vest. It’s shown that Hale shoots through the glass and crawls through the opening to access the building. Hale was armed with two AR-style guns (a rifle and a pistol and a handgun).
Local police arrived minutes after the first 911 call.
Body camera footage was released Tuesday showing Officer Rex Engelbert at the school, holding his weapon from the back of the vehicle and encountering a woman who was a staff member.
“The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.” She describes the layout of the school and mentions that the children are upstairs.
Engelbert and two other officers began searching the school’s first floor as alarms blare. They check several rooms, which are classrooms. Some doors are locked, and the lights are off.
Muffled gunshots are heard in the video, and Engelbert and the officers rush upstairs to the second floor. The gunshots grow louder in the video. Engelbert shoots four times, and the shooter falls to the ground.
There’s body camera footage from the second officer, Michael Collazo as he enters the school running up to the second floor with more officers.
“We’ve got one down.”
Engelbert is a four-year veteran and Collazo is a nine-year veteran in the force. It’s reported that the officers shot and killed Hale at 10:27am 14 minutes after the call.
Hale had also been shooting at the officers through a second story window. The police chief Drake said the two officers were trying to “decompress” and “make sense of all of this” following the shooting. Drake spoke to Biden who told him he reached out to the officers too.
-The victims-
- Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9. She was a third grader at the Covenant School and her sister was a fifth grader. At a vigil, Evelyn’s sister cried, “I don’t want to be an only child.”
- Hallie Scruggs, 9. She was the daughter of the senior pastor at the Covenant Church.
- William Kinney, 9.
- Cynthia Peak, 61. She was a substitute teacher. Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee was a close friend of his wife Maria.
- Katherine Koonce, 60. On the school website she was the head of the Covenant School and Katherine was a family friend to Lee.
- Mike Hill, 61. He was a janitor at the school. Police mentioned; “We pray for the Covenant School and are so grateful that Michael was beloved by the faculty and students who filled him with joy for 14 years. He was a father of seven children and 14 grandchildren. He liked to cook and spend time with his family.
