In February 2022, Hale came uninvited to a birthday party at Ponobe’s Bar and Restaurant in Goodlettsville that was attended by some members of that middle school team, Phillips said. Hale did not seem to be using male pronouns at the time, Phillips said. (Phillips declined to name the other people at the party).
Phillips hadn’t seen Hale in person for many years, she said. But remembering Hale’s mother from their middle school playing days, Phillips tried to get Hale's phone so she could contact Hale's family and get Hale home safely. But Hale refused. The other people at the party weren’t sure what to do for Hale.
“Everybody was confused,” Phillips said. “It was just rubbing us in a weird way of like, giving us a really negative feeling. It didn't feel right.” After Hale refused all help getting home, Phillips left. But she soon started getting social media messages from Hale, begging her to come back. The messages were clear and grammatically correct, however, hardly the kind of messages sent by someone as inebriated as Hale had been acting.
Phillips saw Hale later in 2022 at the celebration of life for their former teammate Sidney Sims, who died in an August car crash in Nashville. She remembers Hale following her to her car to continue to hang out.
“I was expressing to her that it was not the time or the place, that we were all grieving,” Phillips said.
In a private Instagram post shared with The Tennessean, Sims’ sister Taylor described how she and her sister had not had any contact with Hale for years until Hale attended Sims’ funeral. But then Hale showed up uninvited at another family event.
“She then popped up uninvited to my sisters [sic] painting that my mom held a few weeks ago (Odd) and still don’t know how she found out,” she wrote.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/ne...obsessive-former-basketball-team/70061098007/