Police in Tennessee have released surveillance video taken at the school where a deadly shooting took place on March 27. Six victims died in the shooting, including three students and three adults.
The suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, was shot and killed by police. Officials say Hale was a former student at the school.
Suspect shot way into school
The surveillance video released by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) shows the suspect driving onto campus, then shooting her way into the building through double glass doors.
Alarms can be seen flashing inside the building as the suspect, dressed in camouflage pants and wearing a red cap, makes her way down the hall into the church office. After 14 seconds, the shooter emerges from the office and continues walking through the school hallways.
The video does not show anyone being shot, but it does give a frightening view of the moments leading up to the school’s terror.
Hale was armed with two “assault-style” weapons as well as a handgun, authorities said. At least two of them were believed to have been obtained legally in the Nashville area, according to MNPD Police Chief John Drake.
The initial 911 call about the shooting went out at 10:13 a.m. Monday. Authorities say Hale was firing through a second-floor window as police cars arrived.
“It was on the second floor, in a common area, that a team of officers encountered Hale shooting. Two members of an officer team fired on Hale and fatally wounded her,” states a police department press release.
Those two officers have been identified as Officer Rex Englebert, a four-year MNPD veteran, and Officer Michael Collazo, a nine-year MNPD veteran.
According to the timeline laid out by police, 14 minutes passed from the time the initial 911 call went out and the time Hale was shot dead.
MORE 3 kids, 3 adults killed in shooting at Nashville private elementary school
Shooter was ‘prepared for confrontation’
Police say writings recovered from Hale revealed that her attack was “calculated and planned.” Hale had multiple rounds of ammunition and was “prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement,” Chief Drake said. He said the shooter had maps drawn of the school and its entry points.
Investigators executed a search warrant at Hale’s home and say they seized a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun, and other evidence.
Mayor John Cooper said Nashville was joining the “dreaded, long list” of cities and towns that have suffered school shootings.
“My heart goes out to the families of the victims,” Cooper said. “Our entire city stands with you.”
Tennessee state Rep. Bob Freeman, whose district includes the school, said it was “an unimaginable tragedy for the victims, all the children, families, teachers, staff and my entire community,” NPR reports.
State Sen. Jeff Yarbro, who represents Nashville, said on Twitter: “My heart breaks for the families at Covenant. As a parent, I both ache for them and rage with them that fear of this kind of tragedy is just accepted as just part of what it means to raise kids these days.”
A tragic day here in Nashville. My heart breaks for the families at Covenant. As a parent, I both ache for them and rage with them that fear of this kind of tragedy is just accepted as just part of what it means to raise kids these days. https://t.co/X0H1pUWzDf
— Jeff Yarbro (@yarbro) March 27, 2023
President Biden called the Nashville shooting “sick” and “heartbreaking,” saying it was “a family’s worst nightmare.”
“We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart, ripping at the very soul of our nation,” he said at the White House.
The President ordered flags at the White House and all federal buildings be flown at half-staff through March 31 to honor the victims of the school shooting.
According to the national Gun Violence Archive website, there have been 130 mass shootings in the U.S. this year.
A grim theory on how we get gun safety laws
Nashville-based writers already have written movingly about the tragic gun crime at Covenant School, yet another school shooting — this one took the lives of three children and three adults.
Let me add this perspective from only a modest distance away, my adopted home of Knoxville is less than a 3-hour drive east of Nashville.
You see, I am a survivor of a hate crime involving blasts of gunfire. My church, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist, was having a special service on July 27, 2008; it was a children’s play, a condensed version of Annie. A gunman came into our sanctuary early in the play, took out a modified shotgun hidden in a guitar case and blasted away. My friend and an usher that day, Greg McKendry, tried to stop that gunman. Greg’s burly body took some of the blast, saving many lives — likely including my own.
I had reflexively dived under a pew by the time of the second blast. Several in my congregation, including John Bohstedt (dressed as Daddy Warbucks for the play) and another friend Jamie Parkey, tackled the gunman. Greg bled out on the floor of the church he loved. A visitor, Linda Kraeger, there for the play also died, and six were wounded. My wife, in an office at the time, was the first to call 911. The gunman said he had targeted us to kill liberals, and he had brought 76 shells of #4 shot, ammunition for a bloodbath.
I recall this story to explain a grim theory I have about how and when we finally will get effective and meaningful gun safety legislation in our state and our country. Dozens of dead children in Aurora, Uvalde, Parkland, and Newtown did not move our radical right legislators. After this Nashville shooting, several predictably barfed some vacuous variation on “thoughts and prayers.”
We will not have serious gun safety laws until those gun-fetishist legislators lose elections to brave challengers willing to defy convention and run loud and aggressive campaigns pointing out the blood on the incumbents’ hands.
The political coalition to do this is being built by groups like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Everytown for Gun Safety. Their ranks grow daily not only by political persuasion, but also by tragic personal experience. The Gun Violence Archive numbers from 2022 help explain. That year alone 44,333 people overall died from gun violence, more than 20,000 from homicides, murders, (including 646 mass shootings) and accidents, and more than 24,000 from suicides. The number of injuries tallied 38,588 nationwide.
Now let’s assume those dead and injured leave each have six friends and relatives who reconsider any past hesitation on gun safety laws based on the hard realities of what has happened to people they know. That would mean every year of gun carnage in America leads to roughly half a million more people who have had enough of inaction, deflection, and denial. The gun extremists, by excusing the piles of dead and injured neighbors, are building the coalition that eventually will defeat their putrid cause.
The Gun Violence Archive numbers also give us strong clues about the kinds of legislation that must be passed. Let’s start with laws to prohibit gun sales to spouse abusers. Let’s also allow the clinically depressed to put themselves on a no-purchase list so when deep despair strikes they will not succumb to the fleeting but strong desired to kill themselves. We can pass stronger laws requiring gun locks, licensing, background checks, training, and safe storage — and require insurance for all gun owners just as we require insurance for car drivers (and with stiff economic penalties and legal liability for those who fail any of those safety steps). Of course, we also must return to the days when we banned assault weapons from sale, and provably reduced deaths from those weapons.
Different steps will be needed to deal with the hate and mental illness lingering behind America’s tragic gun death tallies, but failure to solve all the deaths cannot be used as an excuse not to take steps that will avoid many of the deaths and injuries. We stand far ahead of other nations in gun deaths, and have more guns than people. It’s time to elevate the people over the guns in our plans for our future together.
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Mark D. Harmon is a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee.