“Let’s go! ‘: Officers were unsure whereabouts of victims and suspect in Nashville school shooting

When the suspected shooter pulled into the parking lot of the Covenant School in Nashville at 9:53 a.m. local time on Monday, a maintenance worker was standing outside with a leaf blower and a group of children were standing in a playground, some enjoying the sunny spring morning on a swing, according to campus security video.

The suspect, identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, drove around the nearly empty parking lot in a four-door Honda Fit, driving past the playground before parking.

Hale sat in the car writing an Instagram message to Averianna Patton, a former college basketball teammate, and sent the message at 9:57 a.m., writing, “I plan to die today. CE IS NOT A JOKE!!!”

“You’ll probably hear about me on the news after I die,” Hale wrote, according to the post Patton shared with ABC News. “This is my last goodbye. Love you,” Hale wrote, adding a heart emoji. “See you in another life.

A police spokesperson told ABC News that Hale was assigned female at birth, identified as transgender, and pointed to a social media account linked to Hale that included the use of the pronouns he/him .

Hale previously attended Covenant School, a kindergarten through sixth grade institution run by the Presbyterian Church, and had no criminal record. But law enforcement officials said medical professionals treated Hale for an emotional disorder.

Memphis Police Chief John Drake said Hale left the house Monday morning with a red bag. Before walking through the door, Hale’s mother asked what was in the bag, Drake said.

“I think she just rejected it because it was a motherly thing and she didn’t look in the bag because at the time she didn’t know (the suspect) had guns and thought no differently,” Drake said. , adding that the investigation revealed that Hale had purchased seven weapons, including two assault rifles and a pistol which Hale was armed with during the rampage which killed three adults and three 9-year-old children.

School surveillance video captured the suspect at 10:10 a.m. using one of the high-powered guns to blast the locked glass doors at the side of the school and breaking through the shattered glass to enter the main school building.

Drake said school caretaker Mike Hall, 61, father of seven and grandfather of 14, stood in the hallway and was fatally hit by at least one of the gunshots the suspect shot through the glass front doors.

Other security video clips from inside the school showed the suspect walking past the church office before turning around and briefly entering the seemingly empty office through an unlocked door and walking past. emerge from it, aiming the barrel of a gun down the hallway, then through a set of unlocked doors. double doors.

Drake said the suspect met Katherine Koonce, the principal of the Covenant School, outside of Koonce’s office. The chief said Koonce was shot and killed in a hallway after possibly having a confrontation with the shooter.

Police said at 10:13 a.m. someone from inside the school called 911, reporting gunshots.

Hallways, offices and classrooms, according to videos, appeared empty as the suspect wore a backward-facing red cap, camouflage pants, sneakers, black gloves and brandished two assault rifles, one held and the other slung over the shoulder. one shoulder – walked around, entering through the doors.

At 10:20 a.m., security video showed Hale walking down a hallway past an office with a sign that read “Children’s Ministry.”

“From what I know of the school and the neighborhood around it, those who fled could have fled into fairly serious cover and concealment areas fairly quickly depending on the terrain. But those who didn’t ‘couldn’t do it and locked down the building, as I understand it, did it right too,’ Brink Fidler, president of Defend System, an active training company, told ABC News. sniper who drilled with Covenant School staff last year.

While teachers hid with students in bedrooms and closets, others fled the campus on foot, witnesses said.

Actress Melissa Joan Hart told ABC News she was driving near school with her husband when they noticed children coming out of a wooded area and stopped to help.

“We helped a kindergarten class cross a busy highway. They were coming out of the woods,” Hart said. “They were trying to escape the shooting at their school. So we helped all these little kids cross the road and brought their teachers there. And we helped a mother find her kids.”

Katie Robbins, who lives near the school, told ABC News she saw the chaos unfold from her window.

“My heart almost exploded,” Robbins said. “Like, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening here.’

Robbins said she saw a group of children and their teacher running out of school, crossing the street and huddled in the doorway outside her home.

“A little boy said, ‘Help me in. How can I enter? ‘” Robbins recalled. “I just wanted to help him and help them all get in, get away.”

She said she and a neighbor helped them to safety.

The first officers arrived on the scene at 10:21 a.m. and entered the school two minutes later. Drake said 14 minutes passed between the first 911 call and the time the suspect was killed.

Officer Rex Englebert, one of the first officers to arrive on the scene, immediately got into the back of his police SUV and retrieved an assault-style rifle from a bag, his camera footage shows. worn on the body that have been made public. Tuesday.

“The kids are all locked up, but we have two kids whose whereabouts we don’t know,” a school staff member hears in the body camera footage telling Englebert, as he approached the front door of the school.

The staff member relayed to Englebert a report she had received on her cell phone from inside the school and told the officer how to get to the stairwell leading to the second floor, saying “All the way down this hallway. At the end of this hallway is Scholarship Hall. They just heard gunshots there, and then up the stairs there’s a group of kids.

Englebert went to the front door and received a key from another school staff member standing there, according to body camera video. Englebert called three officers to join him as he used the key to open the door, shouting, “Let’s go!”

As Englebert and other officers entered the school, sirens went off, according to body camera footage. As officers went from class to class looking for the suspect and victims, one was heard shouting about the suspect: “We don’t know where he is.”

Then officers heard gunshots. “Looks like it’s upstairs,” Englebert said.

At least five officers are then seen climbing a stairwell to the second floor at 10.24am as the gunfire increased. Englebert appeared to take the lead, followed by several officers, including Officer Michael Collazo, who was armed with a handgun, according to his body camera video.

When they reached an open area, officers spotted and engaged the suspect, who was standing by a broken window, at 10:25 a.m. Someone shouted “Reload” as Englebert fired at the suspect and Collazo also opened fire. According to police sources, the suspect was killed at 10:27 a.m.