Authorities revealed Monday that Nashville mass killer Audrey Hale fired off 152 rounds during the assault at the Covenant School that left six dead and sent a church community into mourning.
The shocking detail emerged in the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s latest update on their investigation, which also revealed that Hale plotted the massacre for months in writings found inside his car and home.
“[Hale] documented, in journals, [their] planning over a period of months to commit mass murder at The Covenant School,” police said in a news release Monday.
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Cops say Hale’s writings have been turned over to the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia, which is working with local detectives to determine what drove Hale to slaughter three kids and three staffers at his former primary school.
While a precise motive hasn’t been discovered, police said they’ve determined that Hale “considered the actions of other mass murderers.”
Hale’s motive has been a mystery from the start. Nashville Police Chief John Drake initially speculated that 28-year-old Hale, who attended the private religious school as a kid, held “resentment” toward former teachers there. It’s since been revealed that Hale was devastated by the recent death of a close friend, was under the care of a doctor for an emotional disorder, and had sent a series of dark messages to a friend just before the assault began.
On the day of the shooting, March 27, Drake said Hale left behind a “manifesto” that was being studied by detectives, but its contents haven’t been made public.
The barrage of bullets fired by Hale came from two assault rifles and a handgun, cops said Monday. The three weapons were part of a seven-gun arsenal Hale had legally amassed behind his parents back—stashing the weapons throughout the Nashville home they shared, Drake said last week.
Hale was gunned down by two Nashville officers just 14 minutes after he broke into the school by shooting through locked glass doors. Police said Monday those officers each fired four shots, killing Hale at the scene.
