Key Points
- Six people were killed on Monday in a school shooting in the US city of Nashville.
- Police have released body camera footage showing the moment police fatally shot the suspect.
- The incident is the 90th school shooting in the US this year.
Newly-released video shows Nashville police officers fatally shooting the suspected attacker at a private Christian school that left three children and three adult staff members dead.
The six minutes of footage, edited together from the body-worn cameras of two responding officers and released by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, showed police armed with rifles storming into the building and conducting a room-by-room search.
After clearing several first-floor classrooms, the officers run upstairs to the second floor as gunfire is heard.
The officers run down a hallway — past what appears to be a prone victim — and into a lounge area, where the suspect is seen dropping to the floor after being shot.
Investigators were examining a "manifesto" written by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the 28-year-old former student at the Covenant School identified as the attacker, hoping to learn what motivated .
Monday's violence marked the 90th school shooting — defined as any incident in which a gun is discharged on school property — in the United States this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website founded by researcher David Riedman.
There were 303 such incidents last year, the highest of any year in the database which goes back to 1970.
During a previous press briefing, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale self-identified as being transgender, although offered no further clarity.
Chief Drake and other officials repeatedly referred to the suspect with female pronouns.
Hale used male pronouns on a LinkedIn page that listed recent jobs in graphic design and grocery delivery.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department's Chief of Police John Drake is among those who've visited the makeshift memorial left at the entrance of the Christian Covenant School, where three children and three adults were killed. Source: Getty / Seth Herald/Getty Images
He told NBC the manifesto "indicates there was going to be shootings at multiple locations and that the school was one of them".
Mr Drake said the Covenant School was singled out for attack but that the individual victims were targeted at random.
Investigators believe Hale harboured "some resentment for having to go to that school" as a child, he said without elaborating.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department began receiving calls about a shooter at 10.13am, police spokesman Don Aaron told reporters.
The suspect was pronounced dead by 10.27am.
"The police department response was swift," Mr Aaron said.
The body camera footage showed officers rapidly searching for the shooter, in contrast to the videos showing , waiting inside Robb Elementary School for more than an hour as a shooter continued his attack inside a classroom on 24 May.
That incident, where 19 children and two adults where killed, called into question the urgency with which police officers respond to mass shootings.
Gun control activists attended a rally in Nashville, Tennessee following the school shooting. Source: AFP / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
"Let's go! I need three!" the officer yells as he uses a key to unlock a door and enter the building, where alarms can be heard ringing.
The video shows officers passing by bulletin boards with penguins and photos as they storm one room after another.
When the officers reach the second floor, one says, "We've got one down," before they race down the hallway to confront the shooter.
Flowers, cards, toys, and balloons have been laid at a makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting. Source: Getty / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The video shows the assailant still moving on the ground as another officer repeatedly yells, "Get your hands away from the gun!".
Hale, armed with two assault-style weapons, one of them a rifle, as well as a nine-millimetre pistol, gained entry to the school by shooting through the window of a side door, authorities said.
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