MENORAH LIGHTING
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BARRY ANNOUNCES RUN
DECEMBER 14, 2023 | VOLUME 35 | NUMBER 49
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MNPD: All avenues ‘exhausted’ in investigation of leaked Covenant School shooter writings BY MATT MASTERS
Gov. Bill Lee and his wife Maria survey tornado damage in Madison on Dec. 10.
PHOTO BY MATT MASTERS
Tornadoes rip through Middle Tennessee, leaving six dead BY STEVE CAVENDISH, CONNOR DARYANI AND MATT MASTERS
This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and The News. For more information, visit NashvilleBanner.com. If you’ve ever been in an earthquake, the sound is not necessarily deafening. It is simply everywhere all at once. The noise is low and overpowering, and then — if the quake is terrible enough — it is accented by the world breaking all around you. “It sounds vague, like a big sound,” says Natalie Qayed, a Northern California native who moved to Nashville 10 years ago and has experienced a few earthquakes. The tornado that ripped through her Cumberland Bend neighborhood in Madison on Saturday had that same terrifying noise. Qayed heard the roar growing louder from their downstairs bathroom, where she and her husband Andrew took shelter. “Then I heard the ripping, and I said
to my husband, ‘What is that sound?’” she says. “Now we know it was the roof in the back getting ripped off. But it sounded like twisting metal. It was so fast. We had just enough time to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re getting hit.’ And then it was just `silent. It was gone. It was the weirdest, and it sounded like being inside the fuselage of an airplane.” The tornado spent maybe 15 seconds over them from beginning to end, Qayed estimates. When the couple stepped outside to survey the damage, strips of siding had been sheared from the house, and the back portion of their roof had been torn off and slammed down on the patio. The houses on their street were marked by the randomness of tornado damage: One was caved-in on top while the home next door was only missing an HVAC unit; backyard sheds were catapulted into neighboring lots; whole sections of fences were simply
missing; most homes were missing roof shingles, but the number varied from as few as three to hundreds. The National Weather Service estimates that more than a dozen tornadoes touched down in Middle Tennessee on Dec. 9, killing three in Montgomery County and three in Davidson County and causing widespread damage. The Clarksville tornado, which moved north into Kentucky, was preliminarily rated an EF3 tornado with winds of at least 150 miles per hour. After an assessment with Nashville Fire Department personnel, the National Weather Service rated the Madison tornado as an EF2 with winds of 125 m.p.h. Saturday’s destruction arrives less than four years after another cluster of deadly tornadoes devastated Middle Tennessee — including one that ripped through parts of downtown, North Nashville and East Nashville in >> PAGE 2
The Metro Nashville Police Department has, according to a late-Friday release, “exhausted all available investigative avenues” in identifying who leaked three photographs of handwritten notes by Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale. The notes were found at the scene of the March 27 shooting and photographed. Those images were later leaked to and published by right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder, sparking an investigation during which seven officers were reassigned to administrative roles. On Friday evening, MNPD Chief John Drake announced that all officers have returned to regular duties. “The investigation has not identified current MNPD employees, or employees of any partner agency, as engaging in the unauthorized release of the images,” the MNPD statement reads. The release also notes that an unidentified former MNPD detective who “possessed the images as part of his official duties” would not sit for an interview with police. “That person declined and is no longer a member of law enforcement. The department does not have the ability to compel statements or cooperation from former employees.” Police did not disclose how many people were interviewed throughout the investigation, which included forensic investigations of several electronic devices. “The investigation, led by the police department’s Office of Professional Accountability, determined that the three cell phone photographs were taken in the immediacy of the moment just after the shooter’s journals were discovered in her vehicle,” the statement reads. “Two detectives assigned to the Specialized >> PAGE 6
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