KazPost

Kazakhstan News
Tuesday, May 30, 2023

US Shooter Identified As Trans, Resented Going To Christian School: Cops

US Shooter Identified As Trans, Resented Going To Christian School: Cops

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale had a detailed, hand-drawn map of the school showing various entry points, Drake said. Hale was armed with two assault-style weapons, one of them a rifle, as well as a 9mm pistol, authorities said.
Video released on Tuesday showed Nashville, Tennessee, police officers storming a private Christian grade school on Monday before confronting and fatally shooting an attacker who killed three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members.

The six minutes of harrowing footage, edited together from the body-worn cameras of two responding officers and released by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, showed officers clearing several first-floor classrooms before heading upstairs to the second floor as gunfire is heard.

The officers run down a hallway - past what appears to be a victim lying on the ground - and into a lounge area, where the suspect is seen dropping to the floor after being shot.

Police have identified the shooter as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a 28-year-old former student at the Covenant School. Investigators are examining what they called a "manifesto" that Hale left behind, hoping to learn what motivated the latest in a long string of U.S. mass shootings.

Monday's violence marked the 90th school shooting – defined as any incident in which a gun is discharged on school property – in the U.S. this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website founded by researcher David Riedman. Last year saw 303 such incidents, the highest of any year in the database, which goes back to 1970.

During a previous press briefing, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale self-identified as transgender, although Drake offered no further clarity. Drake and other officials repeatedly referred to the suspect with female pronouns, though Hale used male pronouns on a LinkedIn page that listed recent jobs in graphic design and grocery delivery.

Drake said Hale had a detailed, hand-drawn map of the school showing various entry points, Drake said. Hale was armed with two assault-style weapons, one of them a rifle, as well as a 9mm pistol, authorities said.

Drake told NBC the manifesto indicated that Hale planned to carry out additional shootings at other locations. He said the Covenant School was singled out for attack but that the individual victims were targeted at random.

Investigators believe Hale harbored "some resentment for having to go to that school" as a child, Drake said without elaborating.

The three children were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. Also shot dead were Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of school; Mike Hill, 61, a school custodian; and Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher.

Scruggs' father, Chad, is a pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church, which is connected to the school. In a statement given to ABC News, he said the family was heartbroken.

"Through tears we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus who will raise her to life once again," the statement read.

'GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM THE GUN!'

Nashville police began receiving calls about a shooter at 10:13 a.m., spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters. The suspect was pronounced dead by 10:27 a.m.

"The police department response was swift," Aaron said.

The body camera footage showed officers rapidly searching for the shooter, in contrast to videos showing officers in Uvalde, Texas, waiting inside Robb Elementary School for more than an hour last May as a gunman inside a classroom continued an attack that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults.

In 2018, a number of officers responding to a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, remained outside the building rather than immediately pursuing the suspect, according to a state commission's investigation. Seventeen students and staff members died in that attack.

Both incidents prompted fresh scrutiny of police protocols for active shooters, which call for officers to engage the suspect at once to prevent loss of life.

The start of the Nashville police video shows an officer retrieving a rifle from his trunk as a staff member tells him that the school is locked down but that two children are unaccounted for.

"Let's go! I need three!" the officer yells as he uses a key to unlock a door and enter the building, where alarms can be heard ringing.

The video shows officers passing by bulletin boards and cubbies as they clear one room after another. When the officers reach the second floor, one says, "We've got one down," before they race down the hallway to confront the shooter.

Officer Rex Engelbert and Officer Michael Collazo - whose body cameras provided the footage - both fire several rounds at the suspect. The video shows the assailant still moving on the ground as another officer repeatedly yells, "Get your hands away from the gun!"

Police previously released surveillance footage showing the shooter arriving at the school and gaining entry by shooting through a glass door. The suspect is seen stalking through empty hallways as emergency lights flash, brandishing a rifle and entering rooms, seemingly looking for people.

The Covenant School, founded in 2001, serves about 200 students from preschool to sixth grade in the Green Hills neighborhood of Tennessee's state capital, according to the school's website.
Newsletter

Related Articles

KazPost
Close
0:00
0:00
Two US Employees Fired For Chasing Robbers Out Of Store As They Broke ''Company Policy''
Pfizer, the EU, and disappearing ink - Smoke, Mirrors, and the Billion-Dose Pfizer Vaccine Deal: EU's 'Open Secret
A provocative study suggests: Left-Wing Extremism and its Unsettling Connection to Psychopathy and Narcissism
Ukrainian Intelligence Official Admits to Assassination Attempts on Putin
Bernard Arnault Loses $11.2 Billion in One Day as Investors Fear Slowdown in US Growth Will Reduce Demand for Luxury Products
Russian’s Wagner Group leader: “I am not a chef, I am a butcher. Russia is in danger of a revolution like in 1917.”
TikTok Sues Montana Over Law Banning the App
Ron DeSantis Jumps Into 2024 Presidential Race, Setting Up Showdown With Trump
Talks between US House Republicans and President Biden's Democratic administration on raising the federal government's $31.4tn debt ceiling have paused
Biden Administration Eyeing High-Profile Visits to China: The Biden Administration is heating things up by looking into setting up a series of top-level visits to Beijing by top officials in the coming months
Debt Ceiling Crises Have Unleashed Political Chaos
Weibao Wang, a former software engineer at Apple, was charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars
Mobile phone giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 jobs globally over three years as new boss says its performance not good enough
Elon Musk compares George Soros to Magneto, the supervillain from the Marvel Comics series.
Warren Buffett Sells TSMC Shares Over Concerns About Taiwan's Stability
New Study Finds That Secondary Bacterial Pneumonia Is a Major Cause of Death in COVID-19 Patients Who Require Ventilator Assistance
King Charles III being crowned.
'Godfather Of AI' Geoffrey Hinton Quits Google To Warn Of The Tech's Dangers
A Real woman
Vermont Man Charged with Stalking After Secretly Tracking Woman with Apple AirTag
Elon Musk Statements About Tesla Autopilot Could Be 'Deepfakes,' Lawyers Claim. Judge Evette Pennypacker Does Not Understand How Far and Advanced This Technology Became
Ukraine More Prepared for Counterattack as Reinforcements Arrive
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Discuss Migration, Defence, and Ukraine
AT&T's Successful Test of Satellite-Based Phone Call Raises Possibility of Widespread Coverage
CNN: "Joe Biden is asking for four more years — when 74% of Americans think the country is heading the wrong way“
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Cuts Short Live TV Interview Due to Health Issue
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh slams New York Times' pro-government stance and treatment of sources
Enough is enough: it's time to end the war in Ukraine. While Russia may be to blame for starting it, Russia is not the one refusing to stop it
Fox News Settles their case with Dominion Voting Systems for a staggering $787.5 MILLION
21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested for leaking classified Pentagon Documents
The Supreme Court will allow a 12-year-old transgender West Virginia girl to compete on her middle school’s girls' sports teams amid a lawsuit over a ban
Bank of America cuts short conference after outrage at Ukraine comments
Mitt Romney calls Trump indictment 'overreach,' says charges were 'stretched' to suit a 'political agenda'
The G-7 aims to make global crypto regulations tougher
Russia arrested an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal on espionage charges
Don’t Dismiss China’s Peacemaking Bid
China and Brazil have signed a new deal that will allow them to trade in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar as an intermediary
Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing ‘Profound Risks to Society’
“We've had evidence prior to the pandemic that masks were largely ineffective at preventing community transmission of influenza “
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz:
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz rejects being labeled a "billionaire"
Jamie Dimon is being deposed over JPMorgan Chase role in Epstein lawsuits
Brand new security footage has just been released to the public showing the Active shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale drove to Covenant Church School in her Honda Fit this morning, parked, and shot her way into the building
AMERICA, 2023
U.S. charges FTX's Bankman-Fried with paying $40 million bribe
Fallen 'Crypto King' Who Owes Millions to Investors Was Kidnapped and Tortured
Regulators blame social media for SVB's rapid collapse: 'Complete game changer'
AOC explains why she opposes banning TikTok
Singapore’s Prime Minister says China and US need to stabilize relations because world can't afford a confict between the two superpowers
Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel Corporation, died at 94
×