Graphic body camera footage shows how Nashville police found and shot the Covenant school shooter in minutes
Metro Nashville Police Department
- Newly released body cam footage shows Nashville police officers charging into The Covenant School to stop a mass shooter.
- It took police under four minutes to find and kill the shooter after entering the school.
- The graphic video shows a body on the ground, as well as the moment police shot and killed the shooter.
Editor's note: This story contains graphic imagery that some readers may find upsetting.
Nashville police released body camera footage Tuesday showing how officers took just minutes to find and kill the mass shooter who shot and killed three adults and three children at a private Christian school.
The Metro Nashville Police Department shared footage from the body cams of Officers Rex Engelbert, a 4-year veteran, and Michael Collazo, a 9-year veteran.
"Let's get three [officers]," Rex Englebert shouts in the footage as he and other Nashville police officers prepare to enter the school. "Let's go!"
As alarms blare throughout the building, Engelbert and other officers quickly search for the shooter in empty rooms on the first floor, before running upstairs where gunshots can be heard.
As officers run toward the sounds of gunfire, a blurred-out body can be seen on the floor. Police find the shooter alone in front of a window and open fire. The footage shows the shooter falling to the ground as officers shout "Stop moving!" and "Get your hands away from the gun!"
It took police under four minutes to find and kill the shooter after entering the school.
Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the video clearly showed the police officers on the scene were prepared to handle the deadly situation.
"They have been training and preparing for this and it shows," Giacalone told Insider. "They were doing it methodically, and they were making sure that they were not at risk of getting ambushed, so to speak, because if something happens to them, this whole situation only gets worse."
He added that this video stands in contrast to the police response to the Uvalde shooting, where officers waited for more than an hour before confronting the shooter.
"Just watching [this] video alone is evidence enough that the cops were able to neutralize this person before they can do any more damage. This is where lessons can be learned."
A police spokesperson told Insider that the department releases body cam footage quickly after a widely publicized incident and that sharing the information on Twitter was the best way to "disseminate information widely, especially in the public's interest."
Giacalone said releasing information quickly was the right move.
"It's a sort of textbook kind of response to a terrible situation," he told Insider.