Waffle House suspect arrested

Sheila Burke
TENNESSE.- The suspect in a quadruple homicide at a Nashville Waffle House was taken into custody Monday, police said. Authorities had mounted a massive manhunt for 29-year-old Travis Reinking, after the Sunday morning attacks. Authorities announced the arrest Monday afternoon on Twitter, but did not immediately give details.

More than 100 Nashville police officers had been going door-todoor and searching wooded areas, joined by dozens of agents with the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and troopers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Police said he had stolen a BMW days before the attack. The car was quickly recovered, but authorities did not immediately link it to Reinking.

Reinking, described as a white man with brown hair, opened fire with an AR-15 in the Waffle House parking lot and then stormed the restaurant shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday, police say. Four people were killed and four others were injured before a quick-thinking customer wrestled the assault weapon away, preventing more bloodshed. Reinking then disappeared, police said. Police say about 20 people were in the Waffle House at the time of the shootings.

They in cluded people of different races and ethnicities, but the four people killed were minorities_three black and one Hispanic. It’s not clear why Reinking opened fire on restaurant patrons, though he may have “mental issues,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson said earlier.

He’s considered armed and dangerous, because he was known to have owned a handgun authorities have not recovered. Meanwhile, authorities in Illinois shared past reports suggesting multiple red flags about a disturbed young man with paranoid delusions.

In May 2016, Reinking told deputies from Tazewell County, Illinois, that music superstar Taylor Swift was stalking him and hacking his phone, and that his family was also involved, according to a report released Sunday. Reinking agreed to go to a local hospital for an evaluation after repeatedly resisting the request, the sheriff’s report said.