Metro Nashville Police Claim ‘Active’ Investigation into Covenant School Massacre is Ongoing, Could Take a Year to Complete

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Assistant Chief Mike Hagar claims there is an “active” investigation into the Covenant Presbyterian School shootings and that releasing the Covenant killer’s manifesto and related writings would be harmful. A lieutenant with the police department says it could take up to a year to complete said investigation.

In a sworn declaration, Hagar said he is not opposed to the release of a redacted version of the documents. How heavily the records would be redacted remains to be seen.

Hagar claims MNPD officers continue to investigate and gather information related to the March 27 incident, in which Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a 28-year-old woman who identified as a man, stormed into the private Christian school and fatally shot three 9-year-old students and three staff members. The MNPD investigation, Hagar said, is still an “active, ongoing criminal investigation and an open matter.”

“Based on my 34 years of experience in law enforcement, I believe that harmful and irreversible consequences could result from disclosing investigative files prematurely, including this case,” Hagar said in his statement to the Chancery Court for the 20th Judicial District-Davidson County in Nashville.

But Hale is dead. She was shot and killed by responding officers within minutes after beginning her rampage. The presumption, led by multiple public statements from law enforcement in the nearly two months since the massacre, is that there is no ongoing criminal investigation.

Davidson County Chancellor I’Ashea Myles is presiding over multiple lawsuits seeking the release of the manifesto and related documents, including a complaint by Star News Digital Media Inc., parent company of The Tennessee Star.

The judge rescheduled a status conference hearing originally slated for Thursday to Monday at 1 p.m. A consolidated complaint, as of Wednesday, included lawsuits filed by the Tennessee Firearms Association, the National Police Association and two other plaintiffs.

The Tennessean has since filed a lawsuit demanding the records be released. State Senator Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) is also named as a plaintiff in that complaint, pursuing the case in his individual capacity as a citizen of the State of Tennessee, according to the complaint filed in the Chancery Court for the 20th Judicial District-Davidson County in Nashville. Gardenhire, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sought the documents for “research” in “writing new laws regarding school safety.”

“The Metro Police Department acknowledges that it believes Hale acted alone. Petitioners submit that there is no pending criminal investigation. There is no criminal suspect to investigate,” the lawsuit states.

Hagar and MNPD Lt. Brent Gibson say otherwise.

In his sworn declaration, Gibson says he’s been overseeing the investigation, which is being conducted by a “fluctuating number of MNPD officers.”

“MNPD has been investigating, meeting with, and grieving with the families, working with state and federal agencies, reviewing the officer-involved shootings, interviewing witnesses, executing search warrants, and gathering documents, items and electronic files from the scene, the assailant’s home, and from the assailant’s background,” Gibson said.

MNPD, the officer said, is “in the process of gathering and reviewing:

› Social media records from the past two years

› Internet and bank account records

› Phone records

› Autopsy and toxicology reports

› Records obtained from search warrants

› Medical records, including records of psychiatric treatment

› Gun and ammunition account records

› Interviewing the assailant’s actions for the months prior to the incident

› Following up on information discovered during this process

Gibson asserts officers are trying to determine whether Hale had any assistance with planning the murders or purchasing weapons.

All of this analyzing, subpoena issuing, witness interviewing and data tracking “will take approximately 12 months to complete,” Gibson claims.

“There have been 46 homicide victims so far in 2023, and there were 112 last year,” the lieutenant said. “Our homicide investigators are proceeding to work on this case on a daily basis, with all deliberate speed to complete this investigation.”

But the manifesto and other writings requested have routinely been quickly released in myriad other mass shooting cases around the country.

Attorneys for Metro Nashville have argued that Rule 16 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure and Tennessean v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville, 485 S.W.3d 857 (Tenn. 2016) prohibit the disclosure of the records of an ongoing or underlying criminal proceeding. Plaintiffs in the several lawsuits demanding the release of the records argue the language does not apply in the Hale case.

“In prior years, law enforcement agencies have sought to establish an exception to the TPRA for records pertaining to law enforcement investigations In Schneider v. City of Jackson, the Tennessee Supreme Court stated that ‘none of the[] express exceptions [to the TPRA] incorporate the law enforcement privilege’ and ‘the law enforcement privilege has not previously been adopted as a common law privilege in Tennessee,’” the Tennessean lawsuit states.

The delay in the release of the Hale manifesto has led to speculation, including theories that President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is playing politics with the investigation — and the records attached to it. As someone who identified as transgender, Hale doesn’t fit the left’s usual narrative of a school shooter, critics say.

Several parties have sought to intervene in the lawsuits, including a motion filed Wednesday by a Nashville law firm claiming to represent Covenant School parents.

The motion claims an “overwhelming percentage of parents” are opposed to making the documents public, essentially arguing that the interests of the “victims and survivors of the Covenant School atrocity” outweigh the interests of the public to know what drove Hale to carry out her deadly errand.

“[N]o one was more traumatized, or has suffered more, than the families of the victims and survivors of the Covenant School atrocity. No one,” the motion states.

Hagar asserts it is essential that investigators be allowed to gather materials freely and broadly, using their judgment “without fear that materials they gather will prematurely be released to the public and cause prejudice to the effectiveness of the investigation.”

The assistant police chief said he has reviewed the writings submitted to the court, as well as the proposed redactions.

“Balancing the on-going investigation, with the pending litigation, I do not believe the releasing the redacted version of the writings will impede the investigation,” he said.

Read Lt. Brent Gibson’s declaration:

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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Covenant School Shooting” by Metro Nashville Police Department.