Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said Covenant killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale was able to obtain the guns used in the attack by secretly spending Pell Grant money she was awarded meant to fund her education at Nossi College of Art and Design behind her parents’ backs.
Last week, the FBI released a new series of writings by Hale, the transgender shooter who claimed the lives of six at the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023, dating back to her teenage years.
Among the writings included a 2019 journal entry detailing Hale’s decision to use the grant money, seemingly connecting her lack of funds with suicidal and homicidal plans, specifically writing about a school shooting.
On Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Pappert said that despite Hale maintaining no stable job, living with her parents, and being largely financially dependent, she managed to acquire the weapons used in the shooting by accessing Pell Grant funds she was awarded while attending Nossi College of Art in Nashville.
“This is somebody who never had a real job. She was a part-time delivery driver through an Instacart or a DoorDash type setup. She was a college student – I think it took her eight years to get a four year degree. During this time, she was being financially supported by her parents. She lived at home. She drove an old paid off vehicle. It made no sense – until the audio of her parents being interviewed by Metro Nashville Police Department was released last year…where the parents told the investigators she was using her college money, she was using her…federal Pell Grant money,” Pappert explained.
“The reason why is really made clear in this journal entry: she’s writing about her desire to commit a mass shooting,” Pappert added.
Pappert further pointed to entries in Hale’s 2019 journal where she complained of having less than $200 in her bank account while simultaneously plotting a school shooting.
“She was contemplating this shooting. She’s writing about her desire to take her own life and two or three times in this 3-page entry, she returns to the fact that she has no money. She complains, ‘I have less than $200 in my bank account at all times. How am I going to be independent?’ And then again, wanting to commit a school shooting without the funds to do it,” he said.
Pappert concluded by emphasizing how Hale’s writings throughout the years document a steady decline in her mental health, which he detailed as a “slow motion train wreck.”
“It’s as though you can read a slow motion train wreck as Audrey Hale descends into utter and complete madness,” he said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
This young woman’s story is so sad. But not as sad as the fact she murdered six people, three of them children. That’s why I CANNOT understand why the school and her parents fought so hard to have the FBI keep withholding the writings. Unless we know the whole story, it could make all of us look at some of the people we interact with and wonder, ‘Is that person going to commit mass murder?’ Is protecting the people who ‘treated’ her and failed their duty in reporting things she said worth it?
CONSPIRACY THEORY
Some 3 letter agency helped her with it all.
Where did she purchase the weapons?
Has anyone looked at her paperwork?
Did she get training? We’re not born knowing how to load & fire an AR15
Did she go to a range? Where?
THIS WHOLE THING STINKS JUST LIKE THE LAS VEGAS SHOOTING & OTHER MASS SHOOTINGS& the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, PA. Who recruited Tom Crooks?
Now that we have an FBI Director who can investigate , not hide facts, maybe we’ll get answers.