MAY 2023 - Blues Vol 39 No. 5

. NASHVILLE Covenant

. NASHVILLE Covenant School Shooting NASHVILLE On March 27, 2023, at approximately 10:13 am. Nashville Metro PD received an in-progress active shooter at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter, identified as Audrey Hale. Hale, a 28-year-old from the Nashville area, was a former student of the school. Surveillance footage shows Hale driving to the school in a Honda Fit. Dressed in camouflage-style pants, a white T-shirt, a red cap and a black vest, Hale shoots out the glass of a side door and crawls through the opening to access the building. The shooter was armed with two AR-style guns — a rifle and a pistol — as well as a handgun, investigators said. Metro PD arrived at the school within minutes of the first 911 call. Body camera footage released Tuesday shows officer Rex Engelbert arriving at the school, grabbing his weapon from the back of his vehicle and encountering a woman who appears to be a staff member. She tells him, “The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.” She also describes the layout of the school and says children are upstairs. Engelbert, Officer Michael Collazo and another officer form a stack begin searching the school’s first floor as an alarm blares. They check several rooms, including what appear to be classrooms. Some doors are locked, and the rooms are dark. Muffled gunshots can be heard in the background, and Engelbert and the other officers rush upstairs to the second floor. The gunshots grow louder, and Engelbert enters an atrium and encounters the shooter standing near a window. Engelbert fires four times, and the shooter falls to the ground. Body camera footage from a second officer, Michael Collazo, shows him entering the school on the first floor with a group of other officers. Collazo and the other officers reach the second floor, where one says, “We’ve got one down,” as loud gunshots are heard. He is just a few steps behind Engelbert as the group enters the atrium. After Engelbert shoots Hale, officers rush the suspect, and Collazo fires four more times. Soon after, Audrey Hale, 28, was dead. Armed to the hilt with weapons and ammo, Hale had just fatally shot three students and three adults. The victims might have multiplied were it not for the quick work of these officers. They each said, I was just doing my job. I’m not a hero. But the truth is, you are heroes, and this world needs more heroes and less scumbags. Collanzo is a Marine Corps veteran who once rushed into action after a Christmas morning terror bombing. Collazo, a nine-year veteran of the police force, was among the first responders at the 2020 bombing that injured eight in the Tennessee capital. “[He’s] obviously very brave, braver than I ever imagined,” his sister, Deanne Collazo DeHart, told the outlet. “He really does love his job. “When I sit and think about all the training and all the different classes that he does, and all the family events that he’s had to miss because of training or leaving to go through this training or this class,” DeHart said, “it all really does pay off.” DeHart said watching her younger brother head directly towards danger in the bodycam footage amazed her. “From the big sister point of view, I’m blown away — truly blown away,” she told NewsNation. “I knew my brother was brave. It wasn’t until I saw the video that I really processed how brave.” Collazo, who was born and raised in Nashville, joined the Marines out of high school and also Pictured are: Top Row - William Kinney, Evelyn Dieckhaus, and Hallie Scruggs. Bottom Row - Katherine Koonce, Mike Hill, and Cynthia Peak. served as a SWAT team paramedic, Nashville Police Chief John Drake told Fox News. In 2020, he rushed to the scene after Anthony Quinn Warner, a demented 63-year-old conspiracy theorist, detonated a bomb in his RV around 6:30 a.m. Christmas Day. The blast killed Warner and damaged dozens of downtown buildings, including an AT&T facility that took out power over large swaths of Nashville. Meanwhile, Engelbert, a four-year police department veteran, received a department commendation just one week earlier for “precision policing” after two busts that recovered dozens of stolen credit cards and took a handgun, meth and fentanyl off the streets. “The seizures took two dangerous felons who had multiple outstanding warrants off the streets of downtown Nashville,” the department said in a statement Thursday. Yes, both men, true heroes in every sense of the word. But let’s not forget all the other men and women of the Nashville Metro PD, who also entered that school with the same exact intention. Putting their own lives on the line to protect innocent lives. For they too are just as heroic and brave as their fellow officers who had to take out a wacko transsexual bent on destroying lives. 68 The BLUES The BLUES 69