Nashville police release security footage showing shooter entering school
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Police in Nashville have released security video showing the shooter arriving on campus at a private Christian school before unleashing terror in an attack that left six people, including three children, dead on Monday.
In the edited security footage, the shooter, identified by police as Audrey Hale, 28, can be seen driving a Honda Fit onto The Covenant School’s campus on Burton Hills Boulevard shortly before 10 a.m., the Nashville police department said in a statement accompanying the video’s release on Monday.
Around 10 minutes later, surveillance video from inside the school captures the glass in a set of doors shattering before Hale, wearing a vest, camouflaged pants and a red baseball cap turned backward, climbs through one of the door frames.
A rifle can be seen slung over one of the shooter’s shoulder’s in the video, which runs just over 2 minutes long and has no audio. Hale can then be seen entering different rooms and walking past a children’s ministry door with a second rifle raised.
Police Chief John Drake said that in addition to the surveillance video, the department would soon be releasing body camera video from officers who encountered Hale.
Nashville police chief speaks about suspect of deadly elementary school shooting
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Three students, identified by authorities as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, who were all 9 years old — and three adults — Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61— were killed in the massacre. Koonce was Covenant’s head of school. Hill was a custodian.
Hale, who police have said was a former student at the school, was fatally shot by police not long after officers arrived on the scene.
Police said they first received calls about the shooter at around 10:13 a.m. local time (11:13 a.m. ET).
“The police department response was swift,” police spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters, noting that by 10:27 a.m., “the shooter was deceased.”
Officers had heard shots coming from the second level and “immediately went to the gunfire,” Aaron said. When officers got to the second level, they saw the shooter, who was firing, and Hale was fatally shot, he said. A total of five police officers came upon the shooter, and two opened fire, Aaron said.
Police have said Hale was a transgender person, with Drake saying: “We’re still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident.”
A clear motive in the shooting has yet to be established, but police have said they believe a sense of “resentment” may have played a role.
“There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told Lester Holt of NBC News.
The shooter might have targeted The Covenant School, but Drake did not say whether police believed Hale was going after any specific people.
The former student is alleged to have left behind writings being studied by local and federal investigators.
Police have said Hale appeared to have carefully planned the attack with detailed maps and surveillance.
“We have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” Drake told reporters hours after the shooting. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com