Nashville Waffle House Shooting Suspect Travis Reinking Arrested

NASHVILLE, TN — Travis Reinking, the 29-year-old wanted for killing four people in a shooting at a Murfreesboro Pike Waffle House Sunday, was taken into custody shortly after 1 p.m. Monday, Metro Police announced.

Reinking was apprehended in a wooded area near Old Hickory Boulevard and Hobson Pike, roughly a mile south of the site of shooting, at 1:07 p.m., MNPD spokesman Don Aaron said. Reinking's apartment is in a complex halfway between the restaurant and where he was taken into custody.

Aaron said Reinking was taken to the South Precinct and immediately asked for his attorney and refused to answer questions. He was transported to Nashville General Hospital for evaluation and was booked into the Davidson County Jail on four counts of criminal homicide. Bail was set by the magistrate at $2 million. It was later revoked by a judge.

Reinking was carrying a silver semiautomatic .45-caliber handgun when he was arrested, police said. Officers - the manhunt involved most of the department's detectives and undercover officers - began searching the wooded area, which is behind Cane Ridge Elementary School and was "widely searched" Sunday, after receiving a tip from a Lydia French, who was working with her construction crew and saw a person matching Reinking's description walking through their construction site behind the apartment complex. Tennessee Valley Authority workers directed the searchers to a place where they saw a man walking.

French told reporters Reinking looked "shocked" and "disoriented" when she first spotted him.

"When he seen me on the phone, he kept looking real nervous," French said.

Lt. Carlos Lara, who leads MNPD's narcotics unit, said Reinking immediately "proned out" - laid down - when confronted. He was wearing a maroon t-shirt and carrying a backpack, neither of which he had during the shooting or at the one subsequent sighting Sunday.

His arrest brings to close a massive, 34-hour manhunt involving Metro Police, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Highway Patrol, the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Aaron said more than 160 people were involved in the search midday Monday, which also utilized K9 units and helicopters, both of which were hindered by persistent rainfall from Sunday night until Monday afternoon.

Before his arrest, there had been no credible sightings of Reinking since 8:30 Sunday morning, five hours after he allegedly shot and killed Taurean Sanderlin, 29, a Waffle House worker, and patrons Joe Perez, 20, DeEbony Groves, a 21-year-old Belmont University senior; and Akilah Dasilva, 23, inside in the always-open restaurant.

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According to investigators, a semi-naked gunman - identified as Reinking, who moved to Nashville from the small Illinois town of Morton in the fall of 2017 - armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle opened fire at the restaurant around 3:30 a.m. Sunday at a Waffle House in Antioch. James Shaw Jr., a 29-year-old restaurant patron wrestled the weapon from Reinking, who then ran from the restaurant.

In the summer of 2016, paramedics were called to a parking lot in his hometown because his parents were concerned that he was suicidal and that he believed he was being stalked by Taylor Swift with the complicity of his parents and police. In July 2017, he was arrested for sneaking onto a restricted area of the White House grounds, law enforcement officials said. Reinking told agents he wanted to set up a meeting with President Donald Trump, the Secret Service said. When he was rebuffed, Reinking reportedly told the agents he was "a sovereign citizen" - perhaps a reference to an anti-government movement that uses fringe interpretations of common law in a futile attempt to reject most federal and state authority - who had a right to inspect the grounds.

After the Secret Service alerted local law officers in Illinois about the incident, they revoked his Illinois firearms authorization and he voluntarily turned over four guns from his home. Those weapons were retrieved by Reinkings' father, who holds a firearms authorization. Authorities believe the father then returned the guns to his son. MNPD said there were no Tennessee laws preventing Reinking from owning the guns.

The ATF special agent in charge said that because Reinking's father gave weapons to a person barred from owning them, he could have violated federal firearms laws.

Those firearms included the AR-15 used in Sunday's shooting, police said. Another two long guns were found during a search of his Antioch apartment after the shooting. The missing pistol was the .45 Reinking was carrying at the time of his arrest.

Reinking's former boss, Clark Elliot of Clark Crane, told The Tennessean Reinking was "paranoid" while working on a job in Maryville, an East Tennessee town about three hours from Nashville, between January and April.

“In my direct interaction with him, I didn’t notice anything different,” Elliott said. “The guy was paranoid. He said people were after him – whatever that meant. When it got to the point that he said people in our company were after him, I asked that he be eliminated.”

Reinking, who was nude but for a jacket, began shooting at two people outside the 24-hour restaurant at 3571 Murfreesboro Pike and then, without saying anything, he entered the restaurant and continued shooting, police and witnesses said.

"When he came in, I distinctively remember thinking that he is going to have to work for this kill," Shaw told reporters. "I had a chance to stop him and thankfully I stopped him."

He was treated for cuts on one of his elbows and soon after spoke at a news conference that was broadcast by major news outlets. Disarming the gunman undoubtably saved the lives of other patrons, police said. They called him a hero.

Shaw said he was uncomfortable with the title and attention. He said he actually acted "selfishly," out of self-preservation.

"I'm just a regular guy," he said. Later, Shaw launched a GoFundMe campaign to assist the families of the victims.

Photo via Metro Nashville Police