Attorneys for the parents of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale, who killed three adults and three elementary school students at a Christian school in March, said at a hearing Thursday that the family has a manifesto of the shooter. .
According to NPA Attorney Doug Pearce, the allegations were made as part of a Tennessee lawsuit in which the National Police Association and private investigator Kurata Brewer asked the court to respond to requests for public records. He is seeking to order the publication of Hale’s work.
“In the course of this hearing, something really kind of gratuitous happened. It was one of the parents’ attorneys who introduced them to a criminal defense attorney who claimed to represent the shooter’s parents.” Pierce told Fox News Digital on Thursday. . “He said the shooter died without a will, so there are no other heirs, so whatever those documents — the manifesto — they belong to the parents, and the parents don’t have those documents.” He said he intended to assign parents an interest in “schools.” “
That shouldn’t change the fact that documents seized during an investigation would become part of the public record, he said.
Audrey Hale Police Body Camera Released
Audrey Hale, 28, who was responsible for the Covenant school shooting, is shown in a driver’s license photo and school surveillance video released by the Nashville Police Department. (Nashville Subway Police Department)
“If a public official detains them as part of their job, what happened when the police took them here, they become part of the public record,” he said.
Police say Hale, a 28-year-old transgender artist, left a manifesto, artwork and many other writings after the March 27 massacre.
As a child, the perpetrator attended a church-linked Covenant school, and documents recovered from the perpetrator’s vehicle outlined what police called a “calculated and planned” attack. and broke into the school with three guns.
Body camera footage shows Nashville Police Department officers responding at Covenant School in Nashville after 28-year-old Audrey Hale opened fire. (Metropolitan Nashville Police Department)
Police said the shooter wrote a manifesto, kept a diary, made hand-drawn maps and drawings of the school, and identified potential entry points and illustrations of the shooter, dressed in the same outfit Hale was wearing that day. wrote down.
Police previously released surveillance video that showed police storming the building and incapacitating Hale in front of a second-floor window where the gunman was actively firing at police outside.
Pierce said a decision on the release of the manifesto could be made in the next few days to weeks as the court considers how to proceed amid appeals against the school and parents’ attempts to intervene in the lawsuit. said it was possible.
“We’ll have to see how it develops,” Pierce said. “I think the state already has a very strong precedent that it doesn’t matter who owns the paper or what’s written on it. It’s a public record. It is a record of
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Body camera footage shows Nashville Police Department officers responding at Covenant School in Nashville after 28-year-old Audrey Hale opened fire. (Metropolitan Nashville Police Department)
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According to its website, the Covenant School opened in 2001 as part of the Covenant Presbyterian Church, serving children from preschool through sixth grade.
Among the victims were Harry Scruggs, the minister’s daughter, as well as nine-year-olds Evelyn Deekhouse and William Kinney. Police identified the adults as Principal Katherine Koons, 60, Cynthia Peake, 61, and Mike Hill, 61.
Court records show Hale had no criminal record in Metro Nashville or Davidson County.
Investigators issued a search warrant for Hale’s home, about three miles from the church and school.
Audrey Hale was identified by police as the shooter who opened fire at Covenant School in March, killing six people. (Fox News)
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Hale lived in her family’s house and slept reading other people’s diaries. school shooting incident Under the bed, according to an unsealed search warrant.
Police seized diaries, a large number of documents and electronic devices, according to court filings. Hale also left a suicide note on a desk under one of several laptops recovered by police near the password list in the bedroom.
Hale was an artist who attended Nossi College of Art and Design.
Nashville Police have released a video of 28-year-old Audrey Hale in a shooting at Covenant School on March 27, 2023. (Nashville Subway Police Department)
Police said the shooter had been under medical care for an emotional disorder and had bought seven guns legally from five stores leading up to the attack.
Police Chief John Drake said in March that Hale’s parents didn’t know he owned a gun after they allegedly sold one they knew to a school shooter. Stated.
“They assumed that when she sold the weapons, she didn’t have them anymore,” he said. “After all, she had some weapons hidden in her house.”
Hill, the first victim, is mortally wounded by a gun as Hale storms into the school. Coons heard the first gunshots during a Zoom call, hung up and confronted Hale, city officials said. Police found her dead in the hallway outside her office.
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Drake said investigators were unable to immediately determine a motive, but believed former student Hale targeted the school and its affiliated church.
