Officer Who Fired at Covenant Shooter: 'Fate' I Was There

Officer Rex Engelbert normally wouldn't have been in the area
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 5, 2023 1:30 AM CDT
Officer Who Fired at Covenant Shooter: 'Fate' I Was There
FILE - A woman prays near the likeness of four of the victims as she visits a memorial at the entrance to The Covenant School on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn.   (AP Photo/Wade Payne, File)

"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." Those were the words from Rex Engelbert, the Metro Nashville Police Department officer who led the way to confront the shooter who killed three adults and three children at the Covenant School last month. Engelbert and fellow officer Michael Collazo both fired on the shooter, who was killed, NBC News reports. He normally wouldn't have been near the area, Engelbert said, but he was completing some administrative tasks nearby when the call came in.

Police on Tuesday also released a list of 47 items found at the shooter's home; among those items were 20 journals and a suicide note, the New York Post reports. They show that the shooter, who turned 28 days before the massacre, had been planning the shooting for months. On Monday, police said the shooter's writings reveal they had "considered the actions of other mass murderers" as part of that planning. The shooter "documented, in journals, [their] planning over a period of months to commit mass murder at the Covenant School," police say. No motive has yet been disclosed; police are still investigating a "manifesto" the shooter left behind, the Daily Beast reports. (The shooter was at one point treated for an emotional disorder.)

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