(Headline USA) Nashville police confirmed this week that they plan to release Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto.
Hale, a 28-year-old woman who was identifying as a man at the time of the shooting, gunned down three 9-year-old children and three adults last month. Police revealed at the time of the shooting that they had discovered a manifesto within Hale’s home, but declined to say more about it until this week.
“The investigation has progressed to the point where the Covenant shooter’s writings are now being reviewed for public release,” the Metro Nashville Police Department said in a statement. “This process is currently underway.”
Hale’s attack on the Christian school, of which she was a former student, was “calculated and planned,” according to police. She wrote about other school shootings in journals kept under her bed, and had a hand-drawn map of the school’s interior.
Hale also left behind a suicide note on her desk, police said.
Tennessee lawmakers have been calling on the city to release Hale’s writings with the hopes they will provide answers for the victims’ families.
“It’s been very perplexing to all of us involved,” Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., said last month when asked why law enforcement had not already released the manifesto.
“It seems that certain information is flooded into the marketplace immediately and if it fits the narrative so to speak. If the information does not fit the narrative, it seems to get suppressed,” he added.
Law enforcement experts, however, claimed the delay was necessary in order for Nashville police to do their due diligence.
“From the police department’s perspective, you have to make sure you don’t release something and then there is somebody out there that is part of the plan you didn’t know about and then it’s their time to act so to speak,” said retired New York Police Department Sgt. Joseph Giacalone.
