Police release 911 audio of Nashville shooter’s friend
Police have released the 911 call made by a friend of the Nashville shooter before she gunned down six people, including children. Hear the audio.
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A harrowing 911 call from the friend of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale has been released by police.
In the call, the shooter’s friend Averianna Patton tells the dispatcher Hale sent her a string of messages on social media before Monday’s deadly shooting at Covenant school.
“I’m just trying to see can anybody … I just don’t want it on my conscious … if somebody can go check on her,” Patton says in the 911 call.
Hale had sent Ms Patton several suicidal messages on Instagram in the lead up to the massacre.
Ms Patton said that police came to her home that afternoon to review the messages from Hale.
During an interview on BBC News, Ms Patton said: “She said that I would see her on the news later on … and something tragic was about to happen.
“I don't know what she was battling … but I knew it was a mental thing, you know?.
“Just something in my spirit, when she reached out, I just jumped into the mode of trying to call around make sure that I‘m doing everything that I could.”
Hale went on a deadly rampage 15 minutes after sending the chilling messages, shooting and killing three nine-year-old students and three employees in their 60s.
“I‘m still trying to wrap my head around what we’re going through as a city and trying to find solutions to prevent this from happening again,” she said. Ms Patton, who is a local TV personality and influencer in Nashville, said she and the shooter were once teammates on the same middle school basketball team.
PASTOR WALKS BACK ON COUNSELLING CLAIM
It comes as the school’s ex-pastor Jim Bachman took back claims that Hale was receiving private counselling sessions from the school’s pastor Chad Scruggs, whose nine-year-old daughter Hallie was gunned down in the attack.
Bachmann said in an interview with Inside Edition Hale appeared to be searching for Pastor Scruggs — the current pastor at the Covenant School — in surveillance footage the police released.
However, when approached by The New York Post on Wednesday Bachmann said he had since realised he was wrong.
“I understand that they were not counselling, actually. I think there’s just some confusion because she had, years earlier,” he said.
“But these last two days I’ve had several messages from an assortment of people that not only was there no counselling between those two, that he didn’t even know her,” Bachmann said.
Bachmann confirmed representatives from the private Christian school had been in touch to tell him he was wrong and that he had been influenced by social media and the way he had perceived surveillance video of Hale released by the police.
He added since making the claims he had been contacted by various people who worked at the school who had assured him Scruggs was not counselling Hale.
A spokesperson for the Covenant School said in a statement to the Daily Mail: “Metro Nashville Police have been clear that no one was targeted in the shooting, and Pastor Scruggs was not counselling the shooter.”
“The former pastor had said on a television program he had heard that, but it is not accurate and is based on hearsay, not fact,” the statement said.
Investigators have previously described the attack as targeted, with evidence suggesting other locations were planned for the attack.
Nashville Council Member Robert Swope said the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit (BAU) is working with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to carry out “a very in-depth analysis” of both the manifesto and “certain aspects of the shooter’s life”, according to The New York Post.
“The manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when,” he said.
“There are some incredibly brilliant psychological minds and psychological analysts combing through her entire life.”
‘TRANS DAY OF VENGEANCE’ PROTEST TO TAKE PLACE
Meanwhile, a transgender activist group is planning a “Trans Day of Vengeance” rally outside the US Supreme Court this Saturday.
The Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN) had already been organising the protest in Washington DC before Hale attacked the school.
However, the name of the protest has sparked backlash from some in the wake of the massacre and prompted Twitter to start deleting tweets that featured a poster promoting the event amid fears it was inciting violence.
Although organisers have insisted that’s not the case, saying in a statement on their website: “This protest is about unity, not inciting violence. TRAN does not encourage violence and it is not welcome at this event.”
As of Tuesday, Twitter said it had removed more than 5000 tweets that featured the event poster.
“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. ‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest,” Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin said.
“Organising or support for peaceful protests is OK.”
In a statement, TRAN rejected any connection between the Vengeance rally and the “horrific” shooting that claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults.
“Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence. We are fighting against false narratives, criminalisation and eradication of our existence,” the statement said.
SHOOTER INFATUATED WITH FRIEND
Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale was “heartbroken” when a friend died in a car crash last year – and may have been “infatuated”, a former classmate has revealed.
Hale played in the same basketball team as Sydney Sims, who was killed in a crash last August
Samira Hardcastle told the New York Post “tomboyish” Hale was devastated by Ms Sim’s death.
“After Sydney’s tragic death, Audrey was really heartbroken over it … I just feel like she took it differently than some of us did. She was still posting about Sydney almost daily.
“What I knew of her was more admiring [Sydney]. Maybe even infatuation. That’s specifically who she really, really looked up to,” Ms Hardcastle said.
Hale, who police said was transgender and had started to identify using he/him pronouns, posted a TikTok in February on a since-deleted account, “iam_aiden10,” dedicated to “Syd”.
The clip showed a shadow of a person bouncing a basketball and the words: “For Syd. I look up the sky is bright. It’s a beautiful day. I wish you were here …”
Ms Hardcastle said she had last seen Hale a month ago.
“I don’t think that they were very close but I think Audrey looked up to [her] like she looked up to Sydney. But I don’t know that it was ever, like, a two-way thing.”
It comes as the FBI confirmed it would release the manifesto the shooter left once criminal profilers analysed its contents.
The FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit is working “in tandem with” the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to complete “a very in-depth analysis of certain aspects of the shooter’s life,” local government official Robert Swope said.
“The manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when. There are some incredibly brilliant psychological minds and psychological analysts combing through her entire life,” said Mr Swope, who is a member of the City Council’s Public Safety, Beer and Regulated Beverages Committee.
KELLY SLAMS ‘SICK’ PEOPLE
TV host Megyn Kelly has slammed calls for gun control after the mass shooting at a Nashville primary school that left six people, including three children, dead.
“Three nine-year-olds were shot down yesterday by one sick person in addition to the three school administrators,” Kelly said during her SiriusXM podcast.
“There’s something wrong with our society and I for one am f---ing sick of the kneejerk — ‘It’s the guns. Get the guns’,” the former Fox News anchor said.
“We have 330 million guns, maybe over 400 million by some counts in America.”
She continued: “They’re not going away. We could do an assault weapons ban tomorrow.”
“They’re not going away. All right? We have to take a serious, honest look at what’s wrong with us.”
Kelly said that instead of focusing on guns, people should watch out for “red flags” and “figure out what made this person crack.”
“But we go through this every time,” she said.
“We try to figure out the issues that led to this person to do it or that person to do it, and then we change nothing. Okay?”
“We change nothing.”
HERO COPS A MARINE VET, ‘PRECISION POLICEMAN’
One of the hero Nashville cops who gunned down school shooter Audrey Hale on Monday is a Marine Corps veteran who once rushed into action after a Christmas morning terror bombing.
Michael Collazo, 31, and Rex Engelbert, 27, are both being hailed as heroes after dramatic bodycam footage captured them rushing into The Covenant School and taking down Hale, the New York Post reports.
The school shooter had already killed six people, including three young children, and planned to kill more before she was shot dead, according to authorities.
Officer 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, Fox News reported.
He rushed to the scene after conspiracy theorist Anthony Quinn Warner detonated a bomb in his vehicle around 6.30am on Christmas Day.
The blast killed Warner and damaged dozens of buildings.
Officer Collazo’s sister, Deanne Collazo DeHart, told Fox News: “He’s obviously very brave, braver than I ever imagined. 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,” she said. “It all really does pay off.”
Officer Engelbert, a four-year police veteran, recently received a commendation for “precision policing” after two busts that recovered dozens of stolen credit cards and took a handgun, meth and fentanyl off the streets.
‘VENGEANCE’ CALL SPARKS OUTRAGE
Twitter has temporarily restricted Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional account after the US politician tweeted a graphic that referred to a “Trans Day of Vengeance” following the school shooting.
Ms Greene, a member of the House of Representatives, posted a screenshot of the notice on her personal account on Tuesday which said some of her congressional account’s features were being temporarily suspended for violating Twitter’s rules.
“My Congressional account was suspended for 7 days for exposing Antifa, who are organising a call for violence called ‘Trans Day of Vengeance.’
Twitter’s trust and safety head Ella Irwin said it had to “sweep” the platform to remove more than 5,000 tweets and retweets of the graphic.
“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them,” Ms Irwin tweeted.
“Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organising or support for peaceful protests is OK,” she said.
“The graphic was reported by a high number of users across our platform yesterday and yes, I’m sure the timing of that was due to heightened sensitivity to the language, given the tragic events in Nashville,” Ms Irwin added.
“We always evaluate tweets driving a sudden spike in user complaints.”
Twitter has previously suspended Ms Greene over her tweets about vaccines in violation of its Covid-19 misinformation policy, and also for false claims about election fraud.
In Arizona, the press secretary for governor Katie Hobbs resigned after a tweet suggesting gun violence against transphobes, posted just hours after the massacre.
Ms Hobbs’ office confirmed the resignation of Josselyn Berry, who had uploaded an image of a woman holding two handguns alongside the caption ‘Us when we see transphobes.’
“The Governor does not condone violence in any form,” said Ms Hobbs’ office in a statement. “This administration holds mutual respect at the forefront of how we engage with one another.”
— with AFP
Originally published as Police release 911 audio of Nashville shooter’s friend
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