'Don't know where they are': Body cam shows police tracked Audrey Hale and victims at Nashville school amid uncertainty
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: Nashville school shooting shocked the nation once again after Audrey Hale went on a rampage, killing six people, including three children. Officer Rex Englebert, who was among the first officers to arrive on the scene, immediately picked an assault-type rifle from a bag in the rear of his police SUV cruiser and retrieved it, as per body cam footage released on Tuesday, March 28.
"The children are all locked down, but we have two children that we don't know where they are," a school staff member is heard in the body-camera footage telling Rex Englebert as he reaches out for the front door of the premises.
Englebert was informed by the staffer who was inside the school on how to get to the stairwell which will take him to the second floor where the suspect was shooting from. "All the way down this hall. At the end of this hall is Scholarship Hall. They just heard gunshots down there and then up the stairs are a bunch of children," he was told.
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Hale fired a number of rounds inside the Covenant Church/School building. She was armed with these 3 guns and significant ammunition. pic.twitter.com/3LYOU2r0sh
— Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) March 28, 2023
'We don't know where he is'
Englebert went to the front door and was handed a key by another school staffer standing there, according to the body-camera video. Englebert called out for three officers to join him as he used the key to open the door, yelling, "Let's go!"
Englebert, followed by other officers, entered the school and sirens were going off, as per the body camera footage. The team searched for the suspect and victims, from classroom to classroom where one was heard yelling about the suspect, "We don't know where he is."
Actress Melissa Joan Hart told ABC News that she was near the school with her husband when they noticed children coming out of a wooded area. The couple was driving nearby when the school shooting broke out and tried to help them. "We helped a class of kindergarteners cross a busy highway. They were climbing out of the woods. "They were trying to escape the shooter situation at their school. So, we helped all these tiny little children cross the road and get their teachers over there. And we helped a mom reunite with her children."
'Oh my God, it's happening here'
Katie Robbins, a woman residing near the school, told the news network, "My heart almost exploded. Like, 'Oh my God, it's happening here." She added, "A little boy said, 'Help me get inside. How can I get inside?' I just wanted to help him and help all of them get inside, get away."