By JONATHAN MATTISE, TRAVIS LOLLER and HOLLY MEYER (Associated Press)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Nashville faculty shooter legally purchased seven firearms in recent times and hid the weapons from their mother and father earlier than the assault at a Christian faculty the place the suspect killed three kids and three adults, police mentioned Tuesday.
Police mentioned the shooter didn’t particularly goal their victims throughout the taking pictures at The Covenant School on Monday. The suspect, Audrey Hale, was a former pupil on the faculty.
Authorities mentioned Hale was not on their radar earlier than the assault. Police say Hale was below a health care provider’s look after an undisclosed emotional dysfunction.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows beneath.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville police launched video Tuesday from a body-worn digital camera that exhibits a staff of officers getting into and looking an elementary faculty, then confronting and opening hearth on an assailant who had murdered three kids and three adults within the newest faculty taking pictures to roil the nation.
The dramatic, six-minute video dietary supplements an earlier launch, late Monday, of about two minutes of edited surveillance footage that exhibits the shooter’s automobile driving as much as the college, glass doorways being shot out and the shooter ducking via considered one of them.
The new video from Officer Rex Engelbert’s bodycam exhibits a lady greeting police exterior as they arrive at The Covenant School on Monday. “The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are,” she tells police.
“OK, yes, ma’am,” Engelbert replies.
The girl then directs officers to Fellowship Hall and says folks inside had simply heard gunshots. “Upstairs are a bunch of kids,” she says.
Three officers, together with Engelbert, search rooms one after the other, holding rifles. “Metro Police,” officers yell.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” one officer yells.
As alarms are heard going off within the faculty, one officer says, “It sounds like it’s upstairs.”
Officers climb stairs to the second flooring and enter a foyer space. “Move in,” an officer yells. Then a barrage of gunfire is heard.
“Get your hands away from the gun,” an officer yells twice. Then the shooter is proven immobile on the ground.
Police earlier recognized the shooter, who was killed by police, as 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale. They say Hale was a former pupil and shot via the doorways of the personal, Christian elementary faculty. Hale had drawn an in depth map of the college, together with potential entry factors, and performed surveillance of the constructing earlier than finishing up the bloodbath, authorities mentioned.
Police response occasions to high school shootings have come below better scrutiny after the elementary faculty bloodbath in Uvalde, Texas, through which 70 minutes handed earlier than regulation enforcement stormed the classroom. In Nashville, police have mentioned 14 minutes handed from the preliminary name a few shooter within the faculty to when the suspect was killed, however they haven’t mentioned how lengthy it took them to reach.
Surveillance video of The Covenant School grounds launched by police exhibits a time stamp of simply earlier than 10:11 a.m., when the glass doorways have been shot out by the shooter. Police mentioned they obtained a name a few shooter at 10:13 a.m. however haven’t mentioned exactly what time they arrived, and the edited bodycam footage didn’t embody time stamps. A police spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to an e-mail Tuesday asking once they arrived or whether or not any model of the video contains time stamps.
Police have given unclear data on Hale’s gender. For hours Monday, police recognized the shooter as a lady. At a late afternoon press convention, the police chief mentioned Hale was transgender. After the information convention, police spokesperson Don Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale recognized.
In an e-mail Tuesday, police spokesperson Kristin Mumford mentioned Hale “was assigned female at birth. Hale did use male pronouns on a social media profile.”
The victims have been kids Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all age 9. The adults have been Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
The web site of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian faculty based in 2001, lists a Katherine Koonce as the top of the college. Her LinkedIn profile says she has led the college since July 2016. Peak was a substitute instructor, and Hill was a custodian, in keeping with investigators.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake didn’t say precisely what drove Hale however mentioned in an interview with NBC News that investigators imagine the shooter had “some resentment for having to go to that school.”
Drake supplied chilling examples of the shooter’s elaborate planning for the focused assault, the newest in a collection of mass shootings in a rustic that has grown more and more unnerved by bloodshed in faculties.
“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he informed reporters. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
Authorities mentioned Hale was armed with two “assault-style” weapons, in addition to a handgun. At least two of them have been believed to have been obtained legally within the Nashville space, in keeping with the chief. Police mentioned a search of Hale’s residence turned up a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and different unspecified proof.
President Joe Biden mentioned he had spoken to the Nashville chief of police, mayor and senators in Tennessee. He pleaded with Congress to go stronger gun security legal guidelines, together with a ban on assault weapons.
“The Congress has to act,” Biden mentioned. The majority of the American folks suppose having assault weapons is weird, it’s a loopy thought. They’re in opposition to that.”
Founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, The Covenant School is within the prosperous Green Hills neighborhood simply south of downtown Nashville that’s residence to the well-known Bluebird Cafe, beloved by musicians and songwriters.
The faculty has about 200 college students from preschool via sixth grade, in addition to roughly 50 employees members.
Before Monday’s violence in Nashville, there had been seven mass killings at Ok-12 faculties since 2006 through which 4 or extra folks have been killed inside a 24-hour interval, in keeping with a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. In all of them, the shooters have been males.
The database doesn’t embody faculty shootings through which fewer than 4 folks have been killed, which have turn into way more frequent in recent times. Just final week alone, for instance, faculty shootings occurred in Denver and the Dallas space inside two days of one another.
At The Covenant School, officers started clearing the primary story once they heard gunshots coming from the second stage, Aaron mentioned. Police later mentioned the shooter fired at arriving officers from a second-story window.
Police recognized Engelbert, a four-year member of the power, and Collazo, a nine-year member, because the officers who fatally shot Hale.
The surveillance video launched Monday exhibits the shooter’s automobile driving as much as the college from a number of angles, together with one through which kids might be seen enjoying on swings within the background. Next, an inside view exhibits glass doorways to the college being shot out and the shooter ducking via one of many shattered doorways.
More footage from inside exhibits the shooter strolling via a faculty hall holding a gun with an extended barrel and strolling right into a room labeled “church office,” then coming again out. In the ultimate a part of the footage, the shooter might be seen strolling down one other lengthy hall with the gun drawn. The shooter shouldn’t be seen interacting with anybody else on the video, which has no sound.
Aaron mentioned there have been no cops current or assigned to the college on the time of the taking pictures as a result of it’s a church-run faculty.
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Contributing to this report have been Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, in addition to AP researchers Randy Herschaft and Rhonda Shafner in New York.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”