As the legal battle over the release of Audrey Elizabeth Hale‘s manifesto rages on, The Covenant School, where Hale took six lives in March, is preparing to reopen.
According to WKRN, students will return in January, less than one year after the deadly shooting.
Students have been attending classes at the Brentwood Hills Church of Christ since April.
Hale, who was a former student at the school and who identified as transgender, left a manifesto behind after the deadly rampage. MNPD killed Hale while responding to the shooting.
That document has been in the hands of the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ever since but has yet to be released to the public.
Star News Digital Media, the parent company of The Tennessee Star, along with the Tennessee Firearms Association, The Tennessean, and others have sued for the release of the manifesto, which could shed light on the motive for the shooting.
Such documents are typically released immediately after mass casualty events, making Hale’s manifesto an outlier.
But Nashville’s Covenant Presbyterian Church, The Covenant School, and more than 100 parents of Covenant School students have sued to halt the manifesto’s release.
Monday, the group’s attorney argued in front of a three-judge appeals court panel that releasing the manifesto would have a negative impact on Covenant School students.
For the parents, this case is literally a “matter of life and death,” said Eric Osborne, who also claimed that releasing the manifesto would “only aggravate and grow their psychological harm.”
In an appeal to the emotions of the panel, he said that “[the] simple fact is that the record that we have presented shows that there is a very real risk that if the shooter’s writings are released, one or more children may harm themselves.”
“Attorneys for the church and the school have argued that Hale’s manifesto and related writings include schematics of the school and other revealing information,” The Star reported Tuesday. “Releasing the documents could put students, faculty and staff at risk, they say. But the judge could choose to limit or restrict the release of such information.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that releasing the manifesto is a simple matter of accommodating a public records request.
“That process leaves no room for intervention and, practically speaking, cannot readily accommodate it,” said attorney Paul Krog during Monday’s proceedings.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “Covenant School” by Metro Nashville PD.
