Nashville police have released surveillance video showing the shooter arriving at a private Christian school before unleashing terror in an attack that left six people, including three children, dead Monday.
In the edited footage, the shooter, identified by police as Audrey Hale, 28, can be seen driving a Honda Fit to 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 Monday.
Around 10 minutes later, the surveillance video from inside the school captures the glass in a set of doors shattering before the shooter, wearing a vest, camouflage pants and a red baseball cap turned backward, climbs through one of the door frames.
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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. The shooter can then be seen entering different rooms and walking past a children’s ministry door with a second rifle raised.
In the video, lights, possibly fire alarm lights, appear to be going on and off.
Metropolitan Nashville 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 the shooter.
Three 9-year-old students, identified by authorities as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, 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.
The shooter, who police have said was a former student at the school, was fatally shot by officers not long after they 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,” he said. When officers got to the second level, they saw the shooter, who was firing, and the shooter was fatally shot, he said. A total of five police officers came upon the shooter, and two opened fire, he said.
Police have said the shooter 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,” Drake told Lester Holt of NBC News.
The shooter might have targeted the school, but Drake did not say whether police believed any specific people were being targeted.
The former student is alleged to have left behind writings that are being studied by local and federal investigators.
Police have said the shooter 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.”
Dennis Romero contributed.
