Travis Reinking, Waffle House shooter arrested after five day manhunt ends
Travis Reinking, the 29 year old man who entered a Nashville area Waffle House wearing only an overcoat and brandishing an assault rifle was arrested following a tip from construction workers who said that a man matching Reinking’s description walked into a wooded area near a construction site.
According to police, Reinking also stole a BMW X5 from a Nashville dealership a few days before his attack, but they did not initially make the connection to Reinking. Illinois authorities also shared several incidents involving Reinking, including paranoid delusions that Taylor Swift was stalking him and barging into a community pool in Tremont wearing nothing but underwear and a pink woman’s coat over his body.
He was arrested last July by the U.S. Secret Service after being caught in a restricted area, refusing to leave because he wanted to meet with President Trump. At the time, the future killer was not armed, but the FBI requested that he be stripped of his firearms license and guns immediately. Reinking’s father, however gave the guns right back to his son, and could potentially face charges for doing so.
Victims killed in that Waffle House parking lot were Taurean Sanderlin, Joe Perez, DeEbony Groves and Akilah DaSilva, all people of color. Reinking’s rampage was stopped when James Shaw Jr. grabbed his gun and wrestled it away from him and threw it behind a counter, prompting Reinking to flee the scene in his own gold pickup.
Shaw, despite being hailed by the Nashville police chief and the national media as a hero, does not want to be called a hero, but maintained in interviews that he only did what he thought was the right thing in order to protect himself and others.
Reinking is being charged with four counts of criminal homicide and is currently being held on a two million dollar bond.