The Covenant School shooter's manifesto has finally been released by the Tennessee Star, but it didn't come without a fight.
“We're just a news organization seeking documents that the public has a right to see, but local governments at every level have thwarted our desire to do so, including the FBI,” Tennessee Star CEO Michael Patrick Leahy told “Blaze News Tonight's” Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson.
“In fact, Metro police have been claiming for over a year that the investigation is ongoing, claiming in court in March that it would be completed by the end of June, and now, in early September, they are still claiming that,” he explains.
“This is basically a time-buying tactic because they don't want this information to leak,” he added.
On June 17, 2023, Leahy was summoned to court by the presiding judge in the state case to explain “why he should not hold me in contempt of court.”
“She claimed she had a court order that I may have violated. There was no such order,” Leahy explained. “We had a Kafkaesque event here in the U.S.”
Leahy isn't giving up because he believes it's crucial that Americans understand the motives behind such a shooting, and Savage points out that “the shooter's writings reveal the poor mental health of her that led to the shooting.”
“This is a matter of public concern,” he said. “What are the motivations behind mass murder by very troubled people, and what are the public policy solutions to that? I think that's a very important part of the discussion.”
“We believe we have served the public interest by shedding light on the extremely disturbed mental state Audrey Hale was in and the complete failure of the mental health system to treat her issues,” he continued, noting that Hale had received psychiatric treatment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for 22 years.
“She's also been taking very strong SSRI medications since 2019. Those things have effects on the body. And I think the public debate on this is totally misguided. They're trying to make this into a gun control issue.”
The issue is not the weapon a person uses, but why they pick up that weapon in the first place.
“The real issue here is kids suffering from mental illness are not getting adequate treatment and are being over-prescribed psychiatric medication,” Leahy said.
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