Six people, including three children, were killed in Nashville on Monday when a heavily armed former student returned in a planned attack on the private Christian school.
The 28-year-old former student shot through the locked doors of The Covenant School just after 10 a.m., police said. In less than an hour, the shooter was killed after a confrontation with multiple Metropolitan Nashville Police officers.
Investigators are studying writings the shooter left, but Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said that “resentment” may have been a partial motive in the attack.
“There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school,” Drake told Lester Holt.
The Covenant School is a private, Christian school that enrolls students from Pre-K through sixth grade. Three 9-year-old students, a custodian, substitute teacher and the head of schoold were killed in the attack.
The Covenant School under attack
Officers first received calls of gunfire at the school at 10:13 a.m. and responded to the scene, police spokesman Don Aaron said Monday. Upon arrival, officers heard gunshots on the upper level and moved toward the gunfire, Aaron said.
After the shooter went to the second floor, officers could see who was firing. Two of the five officers, Officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, returned fire.
By 10:27 a.m., the shooter was dead, according to police.
Body camera footage showed officers approaching the school, informed by a woman outside that students were on lockdown but two children were unaccounted for. Officers hurried into the school, where alarms were blazing, and searched a first-floor office before rushing up the stairwell.
The officers walked down two hallways before coming face-to-face with the shooter, who was standing in what appeared to be an atrium, video showed.
Police identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old who previously attended the school.
Hale entered the school with two “assault-type” rifles and a…
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