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The shooter who killed three students and three employees at a Nashville Christian school in recent years legally purchased seven weapons and hid them from his parents before going on the offensive, shooting victims indiscriminately and shooting through doors and doors, police said. window. Tuesday.
Monday’s Covenant school violence was the latest school shooting to rock the nation and was carefully planned. The shooter drew a detailed map of the school, including possible entry points, and observed the building before carrying out the massacre, authorities said.
The suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, was a former student at the school. Hale did not target specific victims, including three 9-year-olds and a school principal, but did target “this school, this church building,” police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference on Tuesday.
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Hale was under medical observation due to an undiagnosed emotional disorder and was not known to police prior to the attack, Nashville Metropolitan Police Chief John Drake said at a news conference.
If the police were told that Hale was suicidal or homicidal, “then we would try to get those weapons,” Drake said. “But as it stands, we had no idea who this person was or if (Hale) even existed.”
There is currently no “red flag” law in Tennessee that allows police to step in and take firearms from people who threaten to kill.
The Tennessee governor said Tuesday night that one of the victims, 61-year-old teacher Cynthia Peake, was a close friend of his wife Maria, and that they were supposed to have dinner that day after Peake’s class.
“Mary woke up this morning without one of her best friends,” Gov. Bill Lee said, adding that his wife once taught with Peake and another victim, Katherine Koons, and the women, and “they’ve been friends with the family for decades. ” .
According to Drake, Hale legally purchased seven firearms from five local gun shops. Three of them were used in Monday’s shooting. Police spokeswoman Brooke Reese said Hale acquired the weapons between October 2020 and June 2022.
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According to Drake, Hale’s parents believed that their child sold one gun and didn’t own the other, adding that Hale “hid several weapons in the house.”
According to Drake, Hale’s motives are unknown. In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Drake said investigators don’t know what motivated Hale, but believe the shooter had “some resentment about having to go to this school.”
Drake at a press conference on Tuesday described “several different works by Hale” that mention other locations and the Covenant School.
At a Senate hearing, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland responded that the Justice Department would launch an investigation into whether the shooting was a hate crime against Christians and that federal officials were working with local police to establish a motive.
Police released footage of the shooting, including edited surveillance footage showing the shooter’s car pulling up to the school, the glass doors smashed, and the shooter diving into one.
Additional body camera video from Officer Rex Engelbert shows the woman meeting the police outside as they arrive and telling them all the kids were locked up, “but we have two kids and we don’t know where they are.”
The woman then directs the officers to the Hall of the Brotherhood and says that the people inside have just heard gunshots. Three officers, including Engelbert, search the rooms one by one, holding rifles and calling themselves the police.
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The video shows officers climbing the stairs to the second floor and entering the lobby, followed by a flurry of shots and an officer yelling twice, “Get your hands off your guns.” The arrow is then depicted lying motionless on the floor.
Police identified Engelbert, a four-year-old police officer, and Michael Collazo, a nine-year-old officer, as the officers who fatally shot Hale. The White House said President Joe Biden spoke to Drake, Engelbert and Callazo on Tuesday to thank them for their bravery.
Police response time to a school shooting came under scrutiny after an attack in Uvalde, Texas, when 70 minutes passed before law enforcement broke into a classroom. Nashville police said it took about eight minutes from the first call to arrival at the scene.
Security video shows a time stamp just before 10:11 a.m. when the assailant shot at the door. Police said the call about the shooter came in at 10:13. Aaron said in an email Tuesday that dispatch records show officers arrived on campus just before 10:22 a.m.
Around 10:24 a.m., law enforcement officers took up the suspect, the chief said during a press conference. According to the controller’s notes, the suspect was downstairs for another two minutes after that.
“There were police cars that were shot at. As the officers approached the building, there was gunfire,” Drake said.
“We feel like our answer is right now, from what I’ve seen, I don’t have much of a problem with that. But we always want to get better. We always want to get there in two or three minutes,” he said, adding that traffic was “blocked” at the time.
Traffic was indeed stopped on a nearby two-lane turning road as the police tried to force their way to the school.
The police gave unclear information about Hale’s gender. Hours later on Monday, police identified the shooter as a woman. Later that day, the chief of police stated that Hale was transgender. After the press conference, Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale introduced himself.
In an email Tuesday, police spokeswoman Kristin Mumford said Hale “was assigned female at birth. Hale used male pronouns on her social media profile.” Later Tuesday at a press conference, Drake referred to Hale with feminine pronouns.
Authorities have identified the dead children as Evelyn Dickhouse, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. The adults were Cynthia Pick, 61, Katherine Koonse, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
The website of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists Katherine Koonse as the head of the school. Her LinkedIn profile states that she has been running the school since July 2016. Pick was the substitute teacher and Hill was the guardian, investigators said.
Kunse was remembered as a man who ran towards danger, and did not run away from it.
“I guarantee you that if the children were missing (at the time of the shooting), Katherine was looking for them,” said friend Jackie Bailey. “Maybe that’s why she got in the way – she was just trying to do something for someone else. She would give her life to save someone else.”
Founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, the school is located in the affluent Green Hills area south of downtown Nashville. It has about 200 students from preschool to sixth grade and about 50 staff members.
Prior to Monday’s riots, there had been seven K-12 school massacres in Nashville since 2006, in which four or more people were killed within 24 hours, according to a database maintained by the Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeast. University. All of them were shot by men.
The database does not include school shootings with fewer than four deaths, which have become much more frequent in recent years. Just last week, for example, the Denver and Dallas school shootings occurred two days apart.
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