Police video released Tuesday shows that responding officers found and killed the heavily armed transgender shooter in less than three minutes after they entered the private Christian school where six people were gunned down Monday in Nashville, Tennessee.
The body camera footage released by Metropolitan Nashville Police follows Officer Rex Engelbert up until he fires the shots that hit suspect Audrey Hale and cause her to fall to the floor on the second floor of the school.
She appeared to be shooting out a window of the Covenant School when Officer Engelbert shot her from behind. Hale had killed three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members.
The video starts out with the officer being greeted by a woman outside who tells him “The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.”
The woman then tells the officers that people inside had just heard gunshots. “Upstairs are a bunch of kids,” she said. She unlocked a door to allow officers inside.
SEE ALSO: Nashville school shooter was transgender, had ‘manifesto,’ police say
The footage shows police urgently, but deliberately, sweeping the lower level of the school before gunfire draws the officers upstairs. That’s where officers confronted and killed Hale.
Police Chief John Drake said that Hale, a 28-year-old biological woman who identified as a man, shot her way into the school through two glass doors on the first floor shortly before 10:15 a.m. local time.
Armed with two assault-style rifles and a pistol, Hale went on to kill 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, custodian Mike Hill, 61, and Head of School Katherine Koonce, 60.
Chief Drake said that police recovered Hale’s manifesto that had “writings … that pertain to this day, to the actual incident. We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”
The chief also said that Hale was a former student of the school that serves roughly 200 students from pre-K through sixth grade. He told CBS News on Tuesday that Hale had “possibly some resentment for having to go to that school.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, called for a federal hate crime investigation into the shooting in a letter sent Tuesday to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“It is commonplace to call such horrors ‘senseless violence.’ But properly speaking, that is false,” Mr. Hawley’s letter stated. “Police report that the attack here is ‘targeted’ — targeted, that is, against Christians.”
Former FBI profiler Cliff Van Zandt said it’s extremely rare to see a woman carry out a mass shooting, especially against children.
“She’s making some sort of statement,” Mr. Van Zandt said of the shooter. “She wants to hurt someone so bad or she’s so wounded she wants to strike back at innocent victims.”
— Jeff Mordock contributed to this report.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.