Nashville police officers at Christian school shooting give harrowing firsthand account of taking out suspect

The Nashville police officers who stopped the transgender shooting suspect accused of killing six people at a Christian school last week spoke out for the first time at a press conference Tuesday, detailing each of their personal accounts of rushing into the building, passing victims and ultimately taking out the threat. 

Police said Officer Rex Engelbert, a four-year veteran of the force, and Officer Michael Collazo, a nine-year veteran of the department who previously served in the Marine Corps, opened fire on Audrey Hale at The Covenant School on March 27. Hale already fatally shot three 9-year-old children and three adults – the head of the school, a substitute teacher and a custodian. 

At a press conference Monday, Engelbert detailed how he would not have normally been in the same sector as the school that day. Being tired and not having finished his coffee yet, the officer said he had decided to head toward the Metro Police Academy to take care of some administrative business when the call came out about the school shooting. 

“I really had no business being where I was. I think you can call it fate or God or whatever you want, but I can’t count on both my hands the irregularities that put me in that position when a call for service came out for an active deadly aggression at a school. I immediately turned on my lights and sirens knowing the severity of such a call,” Engelbert said. “I’ve been to I don’t know how many false active deadly aggression calls. Something told me it was time to really get to this one. I treat them all the same, but I was driving as safely I could get my body there.” 

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Engelbert said he had to plug the address of the school into the GPS and rushed over. Once there, school staff helped him get inside. “Luckily, due to the bravery of two staff members, they stayed on scene, they didn’t run, and they gave me concise, clear information for me to use to help anyone in danger,” he said. “A gentleman gave me the exact key I needed to enter the building. It was readily apparent I was going to be the one to make entry. I’d been given my training. I know my role, and I made entry with the personnel I had. And luckily, I had some.” 

“We cleared the hallway we had, room by room, until we made it into the lobby,” the officer said, describing when he and other officers first made entry. “When I did hear stimulus, I couldn’t get to it fast enough. I just looked for the nearest staircase I could find because I could tell it was above my head. Eventually, following the guidance of other officers, I luckily deployed my rifle, kept walking toward the sound of gunfire. There was, like sergeant said, some smoke in the air. It was very similar to the training we had received.” 

Nashville Chief of Police John Drake said that while video shows some officers in helmets, others rushed in without worrying about putting on ballistic gear first. 

“I definitely wish I had also deployed my rifle caliber rated heavy plates when I found myself at the front of the stack where I found the stimulus or the threat on the second floor of the school,” Engelbert said. Police said Engelbert discharged four 5.56 rounds from his rifle, while Collazo discharged a total of four rounds from his department-issued 9mm pistol.

“Work wasn’t over, we didn’t know if there was another threat,” Engelbert said of the time after taking out the shooter. “Immediately took teammates I’m not used to working with started clearing rooms, escorting children, teachers along. There were more personnel and resources at this time. I was able to guide them out.” 

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Collazo detailed how on March 27, he had just started his shift at the Midtown Hills Precinct and was sending some emails when the call came over radios about the school shooting. 

“We heard the thousand code go out of the active shooter, and we heard the dispatch location and that it was in midtown. Regardless if it was in midtown or not, like every other officer in our department, we took off running out of the office, plugged in the address on our GPS’s, and we took off toward the location,” Collazo said at the press conference Tuesday. “As we were on our way to the school itself, our dispatch as doing a phenomenal job. They were giving us as much updates as they could. They told us the individual had entered into the school, they were actively shooting, gave us a description. And they were receiving this information from the individuals that were already on scene.” 

Upon driving up to the school, the officer said a female and a male school staffer helped direct him. 

“Without hesitation, the employee just took off running toward the door that was learned later to be where the shooter had entered. He took off running and telling me to follow him, which helped out tremendously. So I stayed in my vehicle and drove that direction,” Collazo said. 

“I ended up parking my vehicle, exiting and noticed all the glass to that door had been shot out. Saw shell casings on the ground, bullet holes on the door, so I immediately made entry,” Collazo continued. “As I made entry into the school, I saw an individual that I believe has been identified as the janitor. He was laid out on the ground not moving. I relayed that information over our radio to the dispatch that I had made entry, and I had an individual that was down. Still didn’t have a stimulus. The shooter wasn’t shooting at that point.” 

Collazo, who was with his boss, Det. Sgt. Jeff Mathes, and others began clearing rooms as fast as possible. Video shows them going up a stairwell, but a door at the top was locked. They then pushed back and cut through a gymnasium in deciding to try to make entry on the other side of the building. 

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“At some point during that time frame, we started hearing the first shots. Once we started hearing the first shots that’s when everything kind of kicked into overdrive for us. We had gone up the stairwell, made our way down the hallway, that’s when I ran into that second victim laid on the ground. We had to push past the victim because we continued to hear more shots being fired,” Collazo said. “It was very distinctive. You could clear as day tell that rifle rounds were being fired. We came upon a T intersection. Sgt. Mathes was on one side, and I was on the other side. We didn’t know if the shooter was to the left or the right. Smoke was everywhere. The fire alarm was going off. Somewhere right around that point we heard another shot.”

“So it told us the shooter was to our right. That’s when I made the call and yelled that the shooter was right. And we pushed right and continued down that hallway. Officer Rex had caught up to us. I noticed that Officer Rex had a rifle with an LPVO on it. And not knowing where the shooter was in the distance that we’d possibly encounter, asked Officer Rex to push forward for us, which he did without hesitation. We continued down that path until we encountered the shooter.” 

At the press conference, Mathes said he remembers stepping over a victim. “All of us stepped over a victim. I to this day don’t know how I did that morally, but training is what kicked in,” he said. “Our job is to run toward it – We just heard the sounds and from my training experiences, I knew those sounds to be rifles.”

After Hale was down, the officers said they knew their jobs were not over and turned back to help the victims. By then, other personnel had arrived to extract victims and evacuate people. 

“I was told to sit in my car, and that was very difficult because I could tell there was more work to be done,” Engelbert said. 

“That was when I was able to call my wife and tell her that I was OK and advise her of everything,” Collazo said. 

Drake said the active shooting call impacted hundreds of members of the police department. 

“The first responders that responded, Rex Engelbert, Michael Collazo, and Sgt. Mathes, did what we’re trained to do. They formed together, they got prepared and went right in knowing that every second, every moment wasted could cost lives,” the police chief said. “And I’m so incredibly proud of not only them but other members of our police department as well.”