Nashville, Tennessee — Tennessee’s criminal investigation agency has searched the house of a former Nashville police lieutenant who has been under scrutiny from his former department in an ongoing probe into leaked evidence from a horrific school shooting, authorities revealed.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Josh DeVine said Tuesday that the search warrant was executed on September 17 as part of an ongoing investigation, but declined to provide any information. According to Robertson County property records, the Portland, Tennessee, address searched by agents belongs to former Nashville Police Lt. Garet Davidson.
The affiliated Press left a message at a phone number thought to be affiliated with Davidson.
Authorities are still investigating two rounds of leaks from the case file in the March 2023 Covenant School shooting, in which a shooter killed three 9-year-old children and three adults at the private Christian school. Audrey Hale, the shooter who formerly attended the school, was slain by police but left at least 20 notebooks, a suicide note, and an unwritten memoir, according to court documents.
Months earlier, the Metro Nashville Police Department made a connection with Davidson but stopped short of accusing him of leaking the materials. A separate lieutenant mentioned the links in a court declaration submitted in June, as lawsuits were fought about which of the shooter’s paperwork could be made public.
In that document, Nashville Police Lt. Alfredo Arevalo stated that his division was looking into the leak of three pages from one diary to a conservative commentator who shared them on social media in November 2023. According to Arevalo, during the investigation, Davidson was given a copy of the criminal investigative file, which was kept in a safe at his office and only he knew the key and combination.
Davidson has now departed the force.
In his declaration, Arevalo stated that Davidson had discussed details from the Covenant investigation on a radio show with Michael Leahy of Star News Digital Media, which owns The Tennessee Star, as well as on another program. Star News Digital Media is one of the plaintiffs asking for access to the records.
Arevalo stated that he is “appalled” by the leak and “saddened by the impact that this leak must have had on the victims and families of the Covenant school shooting.”
The Tennessee Star ran hundreds of items based on 80 pages of Covenant shooter papers provided by an anonymous source. The publication later uploaded what it claimed was 90 pages of a journal written by Hale between January and March 2023.
Davidson previously made headlines by submitting a complaint stating that the police department aggressively sought to abolish the city’s community oversight board.
Finally, in July, the judge denied the release of the shooter’s writings, arguing that The Covenant School children and parents own the copyright to any writings or other works made by the shooter. The ruling is under appeal.
Part of the intrigue in the records derives from the possibility that Hale, who police say was “assigned female at birth,” identified as a transgender man, and some pundits have speculated that the journals will expose a planned hate crime against Christians.
Plaintiffs in the public records lawsuits include news outlets, a gun rights group, a law enforcement foundation, and state Sen. Todd Gardenhire. Star News Digital Media is also suing the FBI in federal court to get the documents released.
As part of the campaign to keep the records sealed, Hale’s parents transferred ownership of Hale’s property to the victims’ families, who then argued in court that they should be able to control who has access to them.
In addition to the copyright concerns, the Covenant parents contended that disclosing the materials would be traumatizing for the families and potentially lead to copycat acts.
Certain documents in the police file can be shared after the case is formally ended, as long as they comply with Tennessee’s open records legislation.
Source: Agents search home of ex-lieutenant facing scrutiny as police probe leak of school shooting evidence
