The Covenant School Shooter had suicidal thoughts, the school shooter, long before 2023.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Newly obtained footage takes us into an interview room with the parents of the Covenant School shooter.

It happened just hours after the shooting, but for metro Nashville Police Department detectives, it was the first opportunity to understand why Audrey Hale was forced to carry out one of the worst school shootings in state history.

Covenant School students Evelyn Dickhaus, Holly Scruggs and William Kinney were killed in the shooting. Covenant employees Cynthia Peake, Catherine Koonce and Mike Hill also died.

The shooter was already dead by then, but police asked the shooter’s parents about Hale’s mental health issues long before the shooting.

You can hear the sound in the player above.

“Did she go through any treatment, did any of the therapists, if you can say that, ever tell you guys that she was having homicidal thoughts or anything like that?” – asked the detective.

“Neither therapist ever felt obligated to warn anyone,” Hale’s father, Ronald Hale, responded.

“Only when she was having suicidal thoughts about her well-being,” Hale’s mother, Norma Hale, responded.

It’s not clear from the short videos NewsChannel Five is conducting an investigation The more than hour-long interview revealed whether Hale’s parents believed Vanderbilt doctors could have done more if they knew Hale posed a threat to others.

The police report summarizing that interview shows that some five to eight years earlier, doctors told Hale’s parents that Hale “needed to go to Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital because she was talking about suicidal ideation, especially about school shootings.”

Hale was not admitted to a mental hospital, but his parents said Hale received some treatment.

NewsChannel Five Legal analyst Nick Leonardo said that, like attorney-client privilege, Hale’s doctors were required to keep their conversations confidential unless there was an immediate threat.

“So, is Vanderbilt responsible? It will depend on what they know and when they knew it. This is information that you really can’t get into because it’s confidential,” Leonardo said.

The Tennessee Star recently published some of Hale’s last diary entries, in which Hale wrote: “For 5 years I planned to die. Now I’m finally ready to go.”

This was two weeks before the Covenant School shooting, where Hale also wrote: “I want my massacre to end in a way that would make Eric and Dylan proud.”

Detectives said Hale was obsessed with two teenagers responsible for the 1999 Columbine High School shooting that killed 13 people.

“So she watched a documentary about the Columbine shootings and said things like how she felt close to them, how she could empathize with them and how they felt,” detectives said.

Hale’s parents said they knew nothing about the Columbine obsession or anything else that was written about in the magazines.

“I’ve never read any of them,” Norma Hale said.

“I didn’t know if she expressed it. “It’s something we have to ask just because,” the detectives responded.

“No, the point is that I just decided it was part of the therapy. I thought it was part of the therapeutic process,” Norma Hale said.

Columbine may have given Hale the idea to attack the school, but that still didn’t explain why Hale chose the school she once attended.

“Did she talk about her experience at Covenant School at all? Was it a positive experience? – the detectives asked.

“It was very positive,” Norma Hale responded.

There was very little mention of the Covenant in these journal entries.

Instead, we found that it had more to do with what Hale’s parents said was a fixation on death after losing the friend “she had worshiped all her life.”

“I know Sydney is waiting for me. Soon my time will come to leave this kingdom. All my pain and everything I have… except you,” Hale wrote.

Hale’s parents said they never noticed any changes in behavior, but it raised another important question: How did a man with well-known suicidal thoughts and a fixation on school shootings and death gain access to firearms?

“If that’s not a wake-up call for the people in America who have the power to make a difference, I don’t know what is,” Leonardo said.

On at least one occasion, Hale bought a firearm and then sold it.

Hale’s parents told detectives they didn’t know how Hale acquired the firearms, but they always forced her to sell each gun.

We later learned that therapists met with Hale and “agreed that she shouldn’t have a gun,” but it’s unclear if anything was documented.

Leonardo said that’s where lawmakers could pass legislation allowing health care providers to raise concerns about patients’ access to guns without compromising patient privacy.

“The General Assembly could take action to allow us to refer cases, relax that privilege, or report it to a database that is also confidential.

If you look at what Hale said and wrote, it was clear years ago that something was wrong.

We still don’t have a clear motive for the Covenant school shooting, but Leonardo said it’s just as important as understanding why the shooting happened to understand how we can prevent it from happening again.

Many of Hale’s works were part of an ongoing legal battle between the victims’ families and children attending the school and several news outlets requesting access to the documents.

Chancery Court Judge I’Asha Miles ruled in favor of Covenant School parents, who argued they now owned the copyright to the works after Hale’s parents transferred ownership.

This effectively deterred anyone from attempting to obtain these documents through Tennessee Public Records Act (TPRA) requests, since they were now effectively part of the police investigation.

Judge Miles ruled that “the original works, journals, artwork, photographs and videos created by Hale are subject to an exception to the TPRA created by federal copyright law.”

Hale left behind at least 20 journals, some of which may be published as part of the police file once the case is officially closed. That is, as long as they are subject to the state’s TPRA.

Attorneys have long said they plan to appeal Judge Miles’ decision, but are now waiting to see what documents might be released after Metro Police close their case.

Metro Police have not said when we can expect this to happen.