Nashville police detective Michael Collazo discusses entering Covenant School during the shooting
Nashville police detective Michael Collazo discusses entering Covenant School and confronting the shooter.
Helen Comer, Wochit
Just over two years after three children and three staff members were killed at the Covenant School, the Metro Nashville Police Department closed the investigation believing the shooter’s primary motive to be notoriety.
Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9, as well as Covenant School staff members Michael Hill, Katherine Koonce and Cynthia Peak were killed on March 27, 2023 when a shooter entered the school armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun.
The shooter was killed by Nashville Police officers.
In announcing the closure of the case, the department also released a 48-page report detailing its findings Wednesday.
Police were able to determine motive based on journals left in the suspect’s car, they said.
In total, the various notebooks contained 1,299 pages of content, police said, noting the shooter did not leave a single reason for attacking the school.
According to police, the shooter:
- Wanted material to be publicly released and commented upon.
- Wanted books, documentaries, movies to be made about the attack.
- Wanted the firearms used to be placed in a museum; and wanted their bedroom to be left as it was when the attack occurred as a memorial to them.
- Wanted to mentor other shooters to show how they could succeed with proper planning.
- Wanted to show off their superiority to others.
The shooter chose the school because of “the notoriety (they) would obtain and considered it a soft target.”
The report said the shooter became fascinated with school shootings and began researching news articles, watching documentaries and gathering information on mass shootings — particularly the Columbine school shooting — in the United States.
According to writings left behind, the Covenant School shooter took inspiration from the Columbine shooters because they suffered similar mental health issues and the level of notoriety they received was appealing.
Stefan Banks, a parent of two children at the Covenant School, said during a Wednesday press conference there will never be closure for the families as the city concluded its investigation.
Details of the report vindicated the parents’ stance in blocking the release of the documents, Banks said.
“The conclusion of this investigation establishes beyond a doubt that the legal battle against the public release of the shooter’s evil material is just, appropriate, and should silence any critics of our efforts,” Banks said.
The report said the shooter began targeting the Covenant School in 2021 after initially targeting Creswell Middle School in 2019. The shooter decided against an attack at Creswell, citing its minority student population and not wanting to be branded as a racist, according to the report.
Police also said the shooter acted alone and no one provided the suspect “with material support or assistance knowing that an attack would take place.”
The shooter’s parents assisted them with finding mental healthcare, but the shooter “chronicled that (they) withheld information from providers to prevent (them) from being stopped.”
Fire alarm leads to danger
At 9:53 am. on the day of the Covenant attack, the shooter sent a goodbye message to a friend through social media. Less than 20 minutes later, the shooter entered the school with three guns by firing into the school’s door, shattering the glass.
Michael Hill was cleaning an adjacent room at the time and came out to investigate the sound. The two saw each other, and Hill began running. The shooter fired multiple times, striking Hill.
Smoke from the gun triggered a smoke detector on the ceiling, causing a fire alarm to ring out. The magnetic-locked doors automatically unlocked at the triggering of the fire alarm, the report said.
Students and staff inside the school began an evacuation process.
Students formed single-file lines with their teachers following behind as they organized to leave.
Evelyn, William and Hallie, who were in the same third-grade class together on the second floor, entered the stairwell, where they were met by the shooter, who opened fire, striking the three children. Cynthia Peak, who had left the office to assist students in an evacuation was also in the stairwell. She too, was fatally struck.
As the shooter moved through the second floor, Katherine Koonce, still unaware of an active shooter at this point, was investigating the reason for the fire alarm when she came face-to-face with the suspect.
Koonce asked why the shooter was at the school, the report said. The shooter then opened fire again.
Police arrive to gunfire
At 10:19 a.m., nine minutes after the shooter began firing, Metro Nashville Police and first responders arrived at the scene. For two minutes, from a second floor window, the shooter stood and fired at first responders.
Due to the sound of gunfire and the fire alarm, the report said the suspect did not hear police make their way through the lobby to confront the shooter. One officer fired a 5.56 mm caliber rifle at the shooter, striking the shooter and knocking them to the ground.
A second officer fired a 9mm pistol at the shooter, fatally wounding them.
Shooting sparked protests, legal battle
The shooting prompted protests at the Capitol. Students and parents begged state legislators to address gun violence in Tennessee, though it led to little change.
Gov. Bill Lee called a special legislative session in 2023 in the wake of the shooting. Lee wanted to pass an extreme risk protection law, which would allow courts to remove firearms from people deemed a danger to themselves or others. Instead Republicans focused instead on policies to “harden” physical security at places like schools.
The shooter’s journals also sparked a lengthy legal battle between media organizations, who were barred from obtaining the writings through public records requests, the city and later the parents of the Covenant students. The Tennessean was one of those news organizations seeking access, though there was never any intent to publish the content of the writings.
As the journals were tied up in legal proceedings, a conservative media personality first published three pages of the shooter’s journals that were leaked to him. In September, conservative news outlet the Tennessee Star published 90-pages in another leak. The Star also sued for access to the records.
After the first leak, the Police Department launched an investigation. They ultimately weren’t able to find the source of the leak and said investigators tried to interview a former detective who had the images at one time, but the detective declined the interview request and is no longer working in law enforcement.
Shooter’s parents at one point took weapons
According to the report, the shooter first started fantasizing about committing a school shooting in November 2017 after watching documentaries about school shootings and remembering their own social struggles.
The shooter first purchased a weapon in October 2020 and continued purchasing more weapons over the coming months, the report states. After the shooter’s mother discovered they purchased a book discussing another school shooting, the shooter agreed to give up the weapons, which were then taken to their grandmother’s home. At this point, the shooter was also referred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for an assessment.
According to the report, the shooter’s parents later returned the weapons to their child. The shooter was told to sell the weapons. The parents said they did this in hopes the shooter would demonstrate that their homicidal and suicidal ideations were behind them, the report states, and also because under Tennessee law, it would have been illegal for the parents to sell the guns. The shooter had not lost their legal right to possess a firearm at the time of the shooting.
Leak of documents hindered police investigation, report states
A leak to the media of certain investigative materials apparently hindered MNPD’s ability to effectively investigate the shooting. The shooter’s parents, which police relied on for voluntary sharing of the shooter’s mental health records, no longer trusted police to safely handle the records. The shooter’s parents declined to share mental health records from the shooter’s final therapist.
“After information from the case file was leaked to the media, which included information regarding Hale’s medical and mental health treatment that was to be kept in the strictest of confidence, Hale’s parents no longer had confidence in the ability of the MNPD to safeguard this information,” the report states. “After being unable to devise a mechanism to satisfy their concerns and obtain their consent, and without any other legal mechanism being available to obtain those records, further attempts to obtain those records were abandoned.”
