Nashville police release surveillance video of school attack

Police in Nashville, Tenn., late Monday released surveillance video showing the 28-year-old shooter who killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school firing through the building’s doors and walking through its hallways armed. 

The soundless footage shows the shooter arriving in a silver Honda Fit, then shooting the locked glass doors to enter the building. The person is later seen moving through the interior of The Covenant School, armed with three guns, two of them assault-type weapons. 

Authorities initially described the shooter as a teenager and then as a 28-year-old white woman before the person was identified as Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a former student at the school. Police said Hale, who identified as transgender, was killed by officers on the scene. 

The footage shows Hale in the school hallway with a weapon drawn. At one point, the shooter enters and exits a room marked “church office.”

Hale conducted surveillance of the school in advance and drew a detailed map of the school and its possible entry points to plan for the mass killing, officials said. Police describe the attack as “calculated and planned.”

The motive behind the massacre is not clear.

Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said authorities have recovered “a manifesto” as well as the drawn-out map and are going over the materials. 

The three students killed in the attack — Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney — were all nine years old. The three slain adults were in their 60s — Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.

The Associated Press contributed.