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Just minutes later, he would become one of two officers to fire at and kill the school shooter, who police say had been armed with an AR-style rifle, a handgun, and a firearm with a shorter barrel that uses the same ammunition and magazines as rifles but is legally classified as a pistol.
On Tuesday, Engelbert joined other officers in a news conference to speak publicly for the first time about responding to the rampage that killed six people, including three 9-year-olds.
“I really had no business being where I was,” Engelbert said. “I think you can call it fate or God or whatever you want, but I can’t count on both my hands the irregularities that put me in that position.”
In the days since the Covenant School shooting, the response by Nashville police has been lauded as swift and systematic — a stark contrast to the May 24 mass killing in Uvalde, Tex., where officers waited 77 minutes to confront the shooter.
“They got prepared and went right in, knowing that every second, every moment wasted could cost lives,” John Drake, chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said on Tuesday.
Drake added that Engelbert and other responding officers went into the school “immediately” — some without protective gear.
“They just wanted to save kids,” he said.
Less than 24 hours after the attack, police released body-camera footage from Engelbert and Michael Collazo, the second officer who fired at the shooter. The footage begins with Engelbert arriving at Covenant School, unloading a rifle from his car and interacting with two staff members outside.
“They stayed on scene, they didn’t run,” Engelbert said Tuesday. “And they gave me concise, clear information for me to use.”
As Engelbert walked toward the school entrance, one of the staff members told him: “The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.” A second staffer, who was standing against the building, handed him a key to unlock the doors.
As he did, the first staffer continued telling him where they heard gunshots, adding: “Upstairs, there are a bunch of kids.”
“Let’s go, I need three!” Engelbert shouted to arriving officers. “Let’s go!”
Sgt. Jeff Mathes, who spoke at the news conference Tuesday, was one of the officers who followed Engelbert into the school.
They’d never worked together before, Engelbert said Tuesday, so they gave each other clear commands as they made their way down a hallway on the school’s first floor, making sure each room was clear.
Around the same time, Collazo, armed with a 9mm pistol, was also clearing rooms on the first floor with other officers. Collazo had entered the school through the same door the shooter had. He recalled on Tuesday seeing that the glass of the door had been “shot out” and there were spent casings littering the ground.
All of the officers then heard shots being fired.
“That’s when everything kind of kicked into overdrive for us,” Collazo said.
He, Mathes, Engelbert and other officers linked up inside the school, running toward the stairwell because the shots sounded like they were coming from somewhere above.
When they got to the second floor, smoke and the smell of gunpowder filled the air, Mathes recalled on Tuesday. As the officers followed the sound, they were forced to step over a victim, he said — a moment that still weighs on him.
“I, to this day, don’t know how I did that, morally,” Mathes said. “But training is what kicked in.”
The shots paused as the officers came upon an intersection in the hallway. They were unsure which direction to go.
But another shot was fired. Then, four more.
The officers ran to the right, toward the sound of the gunfire.
As they got closer, Collazo noticed Engelbert had a scope on his rifle.
“Not knowing where the shooter was and the distance that we would possibly encounter with the shooter, [I] asked Officer Rex [Engelbert] to push forward for us,” Collazo said on Tuesday. “Which he did without hesitation.”
Engelbert moved to the front of the group and fired multiple rounds when he saw the shooter standing near a second-floor window. Collazo opened fire afterward, when the officers moved closer. “Suspect down, suspect down,” Collazo said in the footage.
The shooter was dead, but their “job wasn’t done,” Collazo said. After relaying that the shooter had been taken down, they joined other officers in evacuating the school and beginning rescue efforts.
After more officers arrived at the school, Collazo’s commander relieved him from duty for the day.
“That’s when I was able to call my wife and tell her I was okay,” he said.
Mathes, who has an 11-month-old son, said Tuesday that he would have a conversation with him about his role in the response “when he is old enough and ready.”
“Our training kicked in,” he said. “It’s what should have happened. It’s what happened.”
