Waffle House gunman’s troubles began years before attack
Travis Reinking’s erratic behaviour began years before police say he showed up without pants at a Waffle House restaurant and killed four people with an assault-style rifle.
The onetime construction crane operator bounced between states and suffered from delusions, sometimes talking about plans to marry singer Taylor Swift, friends and relatives told police. He was arrested outside the White House last year after asking to speak to President Donald Trump, and his bizarre actions seemed to intensify in recent days with a car theft.
Now Reinking is charged in Tennessee with four counts of criminal homicide. He’s been jailed without bond.
“He’s a good kid that went off the handle for some reason,’’ said Dave Warren, who once worked with Reinking in Colorado.
Former co-workers at Rocky Mountain Crane who were interviewed by police in Salida, Colorado, after the shooting described Reinking as complex.
He didn’t drink or do drugs, according to a police report describing the interviews, and he was known as intelligent, polite and an excellent equipment operator. He didn’t like the government or the National Rifle Association, and he talked about being a “sovereign citizen,’’ although the meaning of the phrase wasn’t clear.
What seemed to drive Reinking more than anything was an obsession with Swift, the report said.
Reinking twice filed police reports — once in Tazewell County, Illinois, in 2016, and again in Colorado last year — claiming Swift was stalking him. He was infatuated with her, supposedly purchasing a $14,000 ring and driving to California to try to meet her, the report said.
But co-workers also knew Reinking as openly gay. He talked of Swift harassing and stalking him — all of which was confusing to fellow employees, according to the interview notes. He quit work believing police were following him and later drove to Last Chance, an unincorporated community in eastern Colorado, thinking it was his “last chance’’ to marry Swift, the report said.
One of the employees at the crane company, Ken Sustrich, told police that he reached out to Reinking’s father with concerns about his son’s mental health. He said the father replied that he was aware of the issues and “had been recently trying to rekindle his relationship with Travis,’’ the police report said.
Back in Illinois last June, a sheriff’s report showed, the younger Reinking barged into a community swimming pool and jumped in wearing only underwear and a pink woman’s coat. That same day, an employee at his family’s business, J&J Cranes, said he emerged from an apartment above the office wearing a pink dress, clutching a rifle and yelling profanities, according to a report.
The sheriff’s department called his father, who was out of state. He told officers that he had taken four guns away when his son was “having problems’’ but later returned them.
Police suggested that Jeff Reinking “lock the guns back up until Travis gets mental help,’’ officer Randy Davis wrote in a report. The father agreed to do so.
Weeks later, the younger Reinking showed up at the White House wanting to talk to Trump, and police arrested him for being in an unauthorized area.
Reinking wasn’t armed in Washington, but Illinois police revoked his state firearms card at the FBI’s request. Four guns, including the AR-15 used in the Waffle House shooting, were transferred to his father, a procedure allowed under Illinois law. The father said he later returned the guns to his son again, police said.
Signs of paranoid delusions continued: In August, Reinking told police he wanted to file a report about 20 to 30 people tapping into his computer and phone and people “barking like dogs’’ outside his residence, according to a report.