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Nashville police have released footage of the moment they opened fire on a church school shooter in the middle of her deadly attack.
Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old who went by the name of Aiden and identified as male, shot and killed three nine-year-old students and three adults at The Covenant School, a private Christian academy in Tennessee, on Monday morning.
The six-minute clip released on Tuesday shows officers arriving on the scene minutes after the shooting began and being briefed by a teacher, who tells them the school is in lockdown but that two students are unaccounted for.
A panicked staff member hands Officer Rex Engelbert a key needed to gain access to the school, which Hale had accessed by shooting through the glass panes of another door.
The police officers make their way into the building and down an empty corridor, where one shouts: “We don’t know where he is.”
Minutes later they find Hale on an upper level, who is armed with assault rifles and a handgun, and open fire.
Someone yells, “reloading,” and Officer Engelbert immediately shoots multiple rounds toward the shooter.
After several shots Hale is seen lying prone on the ground.
“Get your hand off the gun!” one officer shouts repeatedly as they kick Hale’s weapons away from her body.
The video was released less than 24 hours after the incident. In the wake of police misconduct in the US, including the murder of George Floyd and the recent killing of black man Tyre Nichols in Memphis, police forces have begun promptly making bodycam footage available to the public.
Police in Texas came under intense scrutiny over the Uvalde school shooting last May, one of the deadliest in history. It was months before the force released its footage from the day, prompting allegations of a cover-up.
The Nashville bodycam footage appears to show police entering the school within minutes of the first shot fired by Hale as compared to Uvalde officers, who waited in the corridors for over an hour.
Nashville police are later expected to release Hale’s manifesto.
Police said Hale was a former student of the school, but it was unclear if Hale had any current affiliation with the school or was related to anyone in the school at the time of the shooting.
