https://tennesseestar.com/justice/report-covenant-school-shooter-told-therapist-she-fantasized-about-killing-her-family/mgiffin/2024/05/31/
Covenant School Shooter Told Therapist She Fantasized About Killing Her Family
Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale reportedly told her therapist that she was fantasizing about killing her family and committing a school shooting, according to a report by 99.7 WTN radio host Brian Wilson. [highlight=yellow]The therapist reportedly did not report these findings to authorities.[/highlight]
99.7 WTN host Brian Wilson: The ongoing investigation apparently focuses on the shooter’s therapist. Metro Nashville Police Department is remaining silent on this, but sources familiar with the investigation confirm that search warrants were run on the home and office of the therapist in an effort to obtain notes of the therapy sessions with the Covenant School shooter. One source says detectives have evidence that the shooter told the therapist about fantasies that involved, among other things, killing her parents and carrying out a school shooting of some kind.
Tennessee Code Annotated (TCA) 33-3-206 mandates that if a “service recipient has communicated to a mental health professional or behavior analyst an actual threat of bodily harm against a clearly identified victim” and “has determined or reasonably should have determined that the service recipient has the apparent ability to commit such an act and is likely to carry out the threat unless prevented from doing so,” the mental health professional “shall take reasonable care to predict, warn of, or take precautions to protect the identified victim from the service recipient’s violent behavior.”
Additionally, TCA 24-1-207 gives protection to mental health professionals who must warn others but may need to communicate sensitive information about their patients.
Wilson: This is where it gets very interesting. Because if the therapist, whose name to me is unknown at this time, has information of this nature and had shared it with law enforcement officials, it is entirely possible the Covenant School shootings could have been prevented. Now that is a sobering thought. A sobering thought that six people killed by the shooter might well be alive today if the therapist had warned police about the nature of the conversations that-that they were having with the shooter.
Wilson continued and asked why Glenn Funk, the district attorney for Davidson County, had not brought a case against the therapist.
Retired Metro Nashville Police Department Lieutenant Garet Davidson first claimed to Wilson on the air Thursday that police had searched the home and office of a “practitioner” relevant to the Covenant School shooter investigation. He said he did not know why the findings from the search were not “already presented to DA Funk to go ahead and see about an indictment on that individual in question.”
MNPD declined to comment to The Tennessee Star when asked about Davidson’s claims.
Wilson: So if indeed the therapist had this information or had fantasies and discussed in the therapy sessions, wanting to kill parents or to carry out a school shooting, that should have been instantly transmitted to police, and police could have then perhaps intervened in this particular case and stopped this tragedy from occurring. But why after running search warrants and getting the notes have we not seen any movement on this is unclear.
Wilson later transitioned into discussing the possibility of a prosecution of the therapist in question.
Wilson: But-but it’s becoming increasingly clear in talking with my sources that Metro Nashville Police Department has developed information with regard to this therapist and the conversations that therapist had with the shooter that are very eye-opening and could potentially lead to prosecution of the said therapist because the said therapists apparently did not go forward and make any kind of warning to police that could have prevented the shooting from happening in the very first place. I know this is a lot to absorb, but-but that is where I believe the investigation is right now, and it is baffling to me as to why this has not gone forward…
Wilson: And again, we have said time and time again that having the information from the manifestos, the diaries of the shooter being made public would be helpful and helping to come up with some kind of reason and some kind of answer to how we avoid these things from going forward and the first place. And I-and I think that, you know, if tougher laws are needed with regard to when a therapist must report such things could be looked at, it would be helpful to know exactly what’s in those documents. It would be helpful to know exactly what the Metro Nashville Police Department has developed or has not developed. But the fact that we are, that we have this cone of silence around the investigation, which is largely being done because of the many, many lawsuits that have been filed in the many, many lawyers that are involved in trying to shut down the release of that information, I think that the public has a right to know exactly where this investigation stands, and if my information is incorrect, and come back and tell me so, and I’ll be glad to make the correction, but I don’t believe I’m wrong. And I believe my sources are correct on this. And I think there are real questions that need to be answered by the Metro Nashville Police Department about where this investigation is, why it hasn’t gone any further forward, and I think there are answers that need to come from District Attorney Glenn Funk on this matter as well.
