4 dead in Waffle House shooting
Law enforcement officials work at the scene of a fatal shooting at a Waffle House in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville on Sunday.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A gunman wearing nothing but a green jacket and brandishing an assault rifle stormed a Waffle House restaurant in Nashville and shot four people to death before dawn Sunday, according to police, who credited a customer with saving lives by wresting the assailant’s weapon away.
The gunman shot people in the parking lot before entering the restaurant, where he continued firing until a customer grabbed the rifle, Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said. Four people were also wounded before the gunman fled, shedding his jacket.
Authorities said they were searching for the suspect, 29-year-old Travis Reinking, and that they were drafting murder warrants for him. Nashville police tweeted that the pickup truck the gunman drove to the restaurant was registered to Reinking. Witness Chuck Cordero told The Tennessean newspaper Travis Reinking
James Shaw Jr. shows his hand that was injured when he disarmed a gunman inside a Nashville, Tenn., Waffle House on Sunday during the shooting attack that claimed four lives.
he had stopped to get a cup of coffee and was outside the restaurant when the chaos unfolded around 3:25 a.m.
“He did not say anything,” Cordero said of the gunman, who he described as “all business.”
Cordero said the man who wrested the gun from the suspect saved lives. “Had that guy had a chance to reload his weapon, there was plenty more people in that restaurant,” he said.
Police identified the man who grabbed the weapon as 29-year-old James Shaw Jr.
Shaw told the Tennessean in an interview that he was “just trying to get myself out. I saw the opportunity and pretty much took it.” George Walker IV / Larry McCormack / The Tennessean via AP The Tennessean via AP
The newspaper reported that Shaw was grazed by a bullet, treated and released.
“When I was in the ambulance to hospital I kept thinking that I’m going to wake up and it’s not going to be real,” Shaw said. “It is something out a movie. I’m OK though, but I hate that it happened.”
Aaron, the police spokesman, said three people died at the restaurant and one person died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where two others were being treated for gunshot wounds. Medical Center spokeswoman Jennifer Wetzel said one was in critical condition and the other was in critical but in otherwise stable condition.
LARGO, Fla. — Florida authorities went to a funeral home and used a dead man’s finger to try to unlock his cellphone as part of their investigation.
Thirty-year-old Linus Phillip was killed by a Largo police officer last month after authorities say he tried to drive away before an officer could search him.
At the funeral home, two detectives held the man’s hands up to the phone’s fingerprint sensor but could not unlock it. Phillip’s fiancee Victoria Armstrong says she felt violated and disrespected. Legal experts mostly agree that what the detectives did was legal, but they question whether it was appropriate.