NASHVILLE. Tenn. — (NASHVILLE. Tenn.) -- When the suspected shooter drove into the parking lot of Nashville's Covenant School at 9:53 a.m. local time on Monday, a maintenance worker was standing outside with a leaf blower and a group of children were at a playground, some enjoying the sunny spring morning on a swing set, according to security video from the hilltop campus.
The suspect, identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, circled the nearly empty parking lot in a four-door Honda Fit, driving by the playground before parking.
Hale once attended the Covenant School, a preschool to sixth-grade institution run by the Presbyterian church, and did not have a criminal record. But law enforcement officials said medical professionals treated Hale for an emotional disorder. Drake said the school custodian, 61-year-old Mike Hall, a father of seven children and a grandfather to 14, was standing in the hallway and was fatally struck by at least one of the shots the suspect fired through the glass entrance doors.
"Based on what I know about the school and the neighborhood around it, those that fled would have been able to flee into some pretty serious cover and concealment areas pretty quick based on the terrain. But those that were not able to do that and locked down the building, from what I understand, did that correctly as well," Brink Fidler, president of Defend System, an active shooter training company that performed drills with staff at Covenant School last year, told ABC News.
Katie Robbins, who lives near the school, told ABC News she watched the chaos unfold from her window.Robbins said she saw a group of children and their teacher sprinting from the school, crossing the street and huddling at the gate outside her home.
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