Heroes: Police Identify the Two Officers Who Took Down Covenant School Shooter
Law enforcement officials have identified the two officers who fatally shot an armed school shooter Monday, bringing an end to the attack shortly after the 911 call was received.
Officer Rex Engelbert and Officer Michael Collazo were identified in a statement by Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake as the lawmen who located and neutralized the assailant who murdered three children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.
“The shooter, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, who attended the school years ago, arrived on campus in her Honda Fit,” according to the statement. “She was heavily armed with three guns, two of them assault-type weapons, and, as seen in surveillance video, shot her way into the church/school through doors on the side of the building.
“The first call to 911 about shots being fired in the building came in at 10:13 a.m. Officers rushed to the campus, made entry and began clearing the building.
“Shots were heard coming from the second level. It was on the second floor, in a common area, that a team of officers encountered Hale shooting (she had been firing through a window at arriving police cars).
“Two members of an officer team fired on Hale and fatally wounded her. Those two officers are Officer Rex Engelbert, a four-year MNPD veteran, and Officer Michael Collazo, a nine-year MNPD veteran.”
MNPD Officers Rex Engelbert, a 4-year veteran, and Michael Collazo, a 9-year veteran, were part of a team of first responders to the Covenant campus Mon morning. They fired on the active shooter, who was killed. This is their body camera footage. https://t.co/17qsZM6bNp pic.twitter.com/g4b0nMTFRD
— Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) March 28, 2023
Police released bodycam footage of the shootout Tuesday.
WARNING: The contents of the following video contain graphic images which some may find disturbing.
“Writings recovered from Hale revealed that her attack was calculated and planned,” according to the statement.
Several state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and ATF, are assisting Nashville Metro Police in the follow-up investigation, according to the news release.
They executed a search warrant executed at Hale’s home and seized “a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun, and other evidence.”
The three children killed in the incident were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all age 9.
The three adults who were killed were identified as Mike Hill, age 61, Cynthia Peak, age 61 and Katherine Koonce, age 60.
Hallie Scruggs was the daughter of Covenant Presbyterian Church senior pastor Chad Scruggs.
Chad Scruggs described his daughter in a statement to ABC as “such a gift.”
“We are heartbroken,” he said in the statement. “Through tears we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus who will raise her to life once again.”
Peak was a substitute teacher and Koonce was its headmistress, according to ABC.
Hill was described by People as a “beloved custodian” who had worked at the school for 13 years.
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