Waffle House shooting suspect arrested in Nashville woods

[webfact]

Waffle House shooting suspect arrested in Nashville woods

By Tim Ghianni

 

 Nashcille police took the suspect in the fatal shooting of four people at a Waffle House restaurant into custody on Monday, ending a massive manhunt, authorities said. 

 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - Police on Monday arrested the man suspected of fatally shooting four people at a Waffle House restaurant, ending a 36-hour manhunt after tips from the public led police to search secluded woods nearby.

 

Photos posted online by Nashville police showed Travis Reinking, a 29-year-old construction worker, in custody. He was suspected of opening fire with an assault rifle at the restaurant early Sunday then fleeing the scene naked.

 

Photographed in the back of a police car, he looked dishevelled and was wearing a torn red shirt and dirty blue jeans. He had scratches on his shoulder.

 

No motive was known for the attack that sent shudders through one of the biggest cities in the U.S. South and stoked a simmering national debate on gun control.

 

Reinking, who had a pistol and ammunition in a backpack when he was arrested, was not talking to police. He will be booked on four counts of criminal homicide, authorities said.

 

More than 150 city, state and local law enforcement agents searched for the gunman, who has had a history of bizarre behaviour, delusions and multiple encounters with authorities, including an episode in Washington in July 2017 when he was arrested for trying to get into the White House, according to police records.

 

"We need to move on as a community and do what we can to curb this violence," Nashville Mayor David Briley told a news conference near the Waffle House, describing the attack as a tragedy.

 

Tips from people in the neighbourhood helped lead police to search through the woods about two miles (3 km) from the restaurant using sniffer dogs on the ground and aircraft overhead.

 

Metropolitan Nashville police Lieutenant Carlos Lara said as soon as a detective saw Reinking and ordered him to get on the ground, the suspect cooperated.

 

"He did not try to run," Lara said at the same news conference.

 

In addition to the four deaths, two people were injured in the attack.

 

Police said they planned to take the suspect to a hospital for evaluation before he is booked.

 

Reinking was from Illinois before moving to Nashville. After the White House incident, Illinois authorities revoked his license to carry concealed weapons.

 

After that, Reinking's father had told police he would lock up his son's guns, which they said included the rifle used in the Waffle House shooting. But the father returned the weapons to his son, Nashville police said on Sunday.

 

Marcus Watson, an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Reinking's father, Jeffrey, could face federal charges if he knowingly transferred weapons to a person who was prohibited from owning them. The father was not immediately available for comment.

 

The killings in Tennessee's capital were the latest in a string of high-profile U.S. mass shootings in which a gunman used an AR-15 style rifle. These include a Feb. 14 mass shooting when a former student killed 17 people with an AR-15 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

 

In the area near the Nashville Waffle House, local resident Sheryl Friend, a woman in her 60s, said there was a sense of relief.

 

"Everybody was taking precautions," she said. "You never knew which direction he was going to go and what was going to happen."

 

Reinking is accused of shooting two people to death outside the restaurant around 3:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) on Sunday, and killing two inside. The suspect fled after a 29-year-old diner, James Shaw Jr., wrestled the rifle from him.

 

Shaw, grazed by a bullet during the attack, was praised for his courage, but on Sunday he denied he was a hero. "I just wanted to live," he said.

 

David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman student and leader in a student movement for gun control that has emerged from the Parkland, Florida, attack, used Shaw's example to taunt the National Rifle Association, which lobbies for gun rights, on Twitter.

 

"So only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun?" Hogg wrote in a message directed at the NRA.

 

An NRA representative could not immediately be reached to comment.

 

(Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Ben Klayman in Detroit and Jon Herskovitz in Austin; Editing by Frank McGurty, Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-04-24

[Get Real]

Just another brain dead guy in society that the law caught up with. Unfortunately too late. This is the kind of person that should be a good victim at a friday night drunk brawl with a lot of deadly kicks to the head.

[NoBrainer]

Sounds like a good old inbred redneck from the brief description in this story.

[Guest Jerry787]

1 white guy shoot 4 black guys, trump no where to be seen saying something or else.

[Basil B]

4 hours ago, Get Real said:

Just another brain dead guy in society that the law caught up with. Unfortunately too late. This is the kind of person that should be a good victim at a friday night drunk brawl with a lot of deadly kicks to the head.

Is not society that lets "Just another brain dead guy" obtain deadly weapons brain dead too???

[Get Real]

11 minutes ago, Basil B said:

Is not society that lets "Just another brain dead guy" obtain deadly weapons brain dead too???

It´s not! So there is not a democratically elected president and government in USA? Guess you know where brain dead cells fell down now.

Society is the people that is voting and electing the ones that let´s people obtain the deadly weapons you are talking about. 

[lionsincity]

yet another unstable individual with access to guns......this slaughter will only get worse with the mental health issues that are so prevalent in the US today

[Thaidream]

There are so many social issues associated with incidents like this-

 

-He should have never had access to any guns

-The authorities should have never allowed his father to keep the guns- they should have been permanently confiscated.

-Assault weapons should be banned from sale to the general public.

-The President of the US needs to take an active role in promoting a reasonable gun policy instead of catering to his base which wants guns everywhere including arming teachers.

 

There is absolutely no coherent policy in America related to guns; mental illness; war weapons and establishing societal norms.  America has a President that lies; is amoral; and incompetent-  the carnage will continue.