Sandy MaloneNashville, TN – Nashville police have released bodycam videos from the police officers who fatally shot the active shooter at The Covenant School on Monday morning (video below).
Bodycam video showed Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Officer Rex Englebert arriving at the school located inside the Covenant Presbyterian Church on Burton Hills Boulevard just moments after the first 911 call was received at 10:13 a.m. on March 27.
Officer Englebert got out of his police SUV and grabbed a rifle from the back of his vehicle.
A woman who appeared to be a school employee told the officer that the children were locked down, but two remained unaccounted for.
“We have two kids that we don’t know where they are,” she told him.
“Okay, yes ma’am,” he replied calmly and headed for the locked doors of the school, the video showed.
The woman appeared to be receiving text updates from other teachers who were locked down inside the school and provided additional information to Officer Englebert.
“They are upstairs,” the woman told him. “The end of this hall is Scholarship Hall. They just said they heard gunshots down there. And then upstairs are a bunch of kids.”
“Let’s go, I need three!” Officer Englebert yelled as he staged himself at the entrance and took the keys from a man who was hiding outside the door.
“One more, one more,” another officer yelled off camera as Officer Englebert unlocked the school and began racing toward the threat, the video showed.
Bodycam video showed the officers cleared the classrooms, bathrooms, and offices on either side of the hallway as they made their way through the building.
Some of the officers were in SWAT gear, but a few didn’t even appear to wearing ballistic vests.
All of the officers who appeared in the bodycam videos that were released raced toward the threat and the sound of gunshots and none of them appeared to hesitate at any point.
“It’s upstairs. It sounds like it’s upstairs,” Officer Englebert told his fellow officers.
Bodycam video showed the officers downstairs raced up the stairwell and down a hallway toward the sound of gunfire.
All of the gunfire that can be heard in the video was from the active shooter, according to police.
The shooter was ultimately located in an atrium area in front of a big glass window.
She was confronted by five officers and fatally shot by Officers Englebert and Collazo, WTVF reported.
Bodycam video showed she was pointing her rifle at the approaching officers when Officer Englebert opened fire on her and shot her.
The shooter went down but continued to reach for her gun.
“Watch out, watch out,” Officer Collazo said in the video.
And then he fired four shots at the suspect whom the video showed was reaching for one of her weapons.
“Stop moving, stop moving! Keep your hands away from the gun,” Officer Collazo yelled as he approached the suspect.
Bodycam showed officers removed multiple guns from the reach of the downed school shooter.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) spokesman Don Aaron told reporters “the police department response was swift” and said “the shooter was deceased” by 10:27 a.m.
Three children and three adults had been fatally shot before police arrived on the scene, WSMV reported.
Police said the shooter was armed with two “assault-style rifles and a handgun” on the second floor of the grade school when officers arrived.
Officials have identified the murdered children as nine-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, WSVN reported.
Scruggs was the daughter of the pastor of the church where the massacre occurred.
The murdered adults have been identified as 61-year-old Cynthia Peak, 60-year-old Katherine Koonce, and 61-year-old Mike Hill.
Koonce was Head of School, Peak was a substitute teacher, and Hill was a custodian, NBC News reported.
It’s not known if the shooter had a connection to any of the students or school employees.
“At one point she was a student at that school,” Chief Drake told reporters at a briefing hours after the shooting. “But unsure what year… but that’s what I’ve been told so far.”
The Covenant School’s student body includes children from preschool through 6th Grade, according to the school’s website.
It has about 33 teachers and as many as 210 children in the student body, according to The New York Times.
The police chief said investigators were combing through the dead shooter’s home searching for clues about what led up to the killing spree at her former grade school, NBC News reported.
Chief Drake said investigators had found “a manifesto” in the suspect’s home but no motive for the massacre has been released.
Watch the incident unfold in the video below. WARNING – Graphic Content:
Nashville Police have released the bodycam footage and it cannot be stressed enough how remarkable this response was. These men are absolute heroes. pic.twitter.com/aOT8IJyH04
— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) March 28, 2023
Holly Matkin
