Nashville Christian faculty killer Audrey Hale, a transgender artist who gunned down three 9-year-olds and three adults final week, saved journals on different faculty shootings below her mattress – which had been seized together with a trove of paperwork and digital units, courtroom filings reveal.
The 28-year-old apparently left behind a suicide word on a desk below one among a number of laptops police recovered, close to an inventory of passwords. Additionally they discovered two “memoirs,” a 12-gauge Mossberg 590 and a 20-gauge Winchester Mannequin 1200. One in every of them had been sawed off, police stated beforehand.
Hale additionally saved notes on firearms coaching, in response to the warrant.
However no matter that coaching concerned, heroic Nashville cops intercepted the energetic shooter inside minutes of dashing into the Covenant College, a personal faculty that educates kids from preschool via sixth grade.
NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL SHOOTING TIMELINE: AUDREY HALE’S 14 MINUTES OF MAYHEM
Photographs of Audrey Hale’s Nashville residence that had been included within the police division’s utility for a search warrant. Photographs from after the raid present it boarded up. (Davidson County Legal Courtroom)
Moments later, bodycam video confirmed Hale crumpled on the ground close to a window the place she had been perched and fired at cops exterior.
Brokers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recognized Hale with facial recognition expertise, the search warrant reveals.
The expertise rapidly gave them a reputation and driver’s license, which together with the registration of the Honda Match parked exterior, led investigators to Hale’s dad and mom’ home in Nashville. Along with the passwords on a sticky word, they seized a cache of electronics there, together with six laptops, seven cellphones, a pill and 11 laptop drives.
Learn the warrant stock (Cellular customers go right here)
Additionally they discovered 20 journals all through the basement, 14 movies and a Tennessee man’s driver’s license in a bookcase together with images of the Covenant College, the place the killer was as soon as a scholar, and 5 yearbooks from there.
Further paperwork recovered on the residence included tune lyrics, art work and several other handwritten notes.
NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL SHOOTER FIRED 152 SHOTS IN MASSACRE PLOT MONTHS IN MAKING, POLICE SAY
WATCH: Nashville Officer Engelbert recounts faculty taking pictures
Police beforehand stated they discovered inside Hale’s automotive a yet-to-be-released manifesto in addition to detailed diagrams of the church-linked faculty and maps of potential entry factors for the bloodbath.
On the residence, they recovered containers of ammunition and “miscellaneous firearm equipment” in addition to targets and spent cartridges.
On March 27, Hale shot via a glass door and entered the Christian faculty in Nashville, firing 152 photographs throughout an assault that killed three 9-year-olds and three adults, police stated.
Audrey Hale was recognized by police because the shooter who opened hearth on the Covenant College in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, killing six folks. (Fox Information)
Hale had been below a physician’s take care of an unspecified emotional dysfunction, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake stated final week.
Hale’s manifesto has not been launched to the general public. Police stated they despatched a duplicate to the FBI’s Behavioral Evaluation Unit in Quantico, Virginia.
Whereas they’re nonetheless investigating Hale’s potential motive, the killer “thought of the actions of different mass murderers” whereas plotting the bloodbath, police stated.
Covenant College shooter Audrey Hale, 28, is pictured in a driver’s license photograph and on faculty surveillance video launched by Nashville police. (Metro Nashville Police Division)
The kid victims had been Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of the varsity church’s pastor, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney. The adults included 60-year-old Head of College Katherine Koonce, custodian Michael Hill and substitute trainer Cynthia Peak, each 61.
Prime: Hallie Scruggs, left, and Evelyn Dieckhaus; backside, Katherine Koonce, left, Mike Hill and Cynthia Peak. Fellow sufferer William Kinney shouldn’t be proven. (Fox Information)
WATCH: Nashville Detective Collazo particulars faculty taking pictures
Harrowing bodycam video exhibits Officer Rex Engelbert and Detective Michael Collazo storming the varsity earlier than they discovered Hale firing out of a second-story window.
Engelbert, in his first public remarks because the incident Tuesday, stated he hadn’t had his morning espresso and wasn’t feeling properly, however he instantly snapped into motion when he heard the dispatcher over the radio speaking about “an act of lethal aggression.”
He was among the many first to reach, and a faculty employee handed him the important thing that unlocked the door that police used to realize entry, bodycam video exhibits. Engelbert was unfamiliar with the officers at his again, however that didn’t hamper the group’s response, which specialists have informed Fox Information Digital could possibly be a “coaching video” for his or her excellent execution of an active-shooter response.
A nonetheless from bodycam footage exhibits Nashville Police Officer Rex Engelbert and different officers responding to the Covenant College in Nashville after 28-year-old Audrey Hale opened hearth. (Metropolitan Nashville Police Division)
Three minutes into their arrival, they heard gunshots upstairs and sprinted towards the sound.
Engelbert engaged first, stopping the killer with 4 photographs from a division rifle. He later stated he smelled smoke upon rounding the nook, which police informed Fox Information Digital probably triggered the constructing’s hearth alarms, which could possibly be heard blaring all through the incident in each officers’ bodycams.
Collazo, a Marine Corps veteran and former paramedic, rounded the nook subsequent, ordering the shooter to cease transferring and drop the gun, then he fired 4 extra photographs.
Nashville Metro Police Officer Michael Collazo, heart, was one among two cops who fired on Covenant College shooter Audrey Hale. (Offered by Collazo household)
Hale was pronounced useless on the scene. Police recovered three firearms used within the assault and stated that they had all been legally bought prematurely.
However the job wasn’t performed, Collazo stated Tuesday. There have been victims in want of medical consideration.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“I believe it clicked for each officer that was on scene at that time, it was time to begin attempting to render help to the victims and begin evacuating the varsity,” he stated. “So, we carried out our rescue process power protocol.”
He stayed on scene as extra officers continued to reach, lastly stepping again when a commander informed him to. Then he known as his spouse to inform her he was OK.
Fox Information’ Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.
