Updated, August 5, 2015 4:12pm PST: Initial reports indicated the suspect was a 51-year-old male. Nashville police later confirmed the suspect was in fact a 29-year-old.
Previously:
A 29-year-old white man armed with a hatchet, a gun and pepper spray opened fire Wednesday during a screening of “Mad Max: Fury Road” at a theater in Antioch, Tennessee, injuring three people before he was shot and killed by police, according to local authorities.
The assailant, who has not yet been identified, entered the Carmike Hickory 8 Cinemas outside Nashville for the 1:15 p.m. screening of “Mad Max: Fury Road” with a reported eight moviegoers. Wearing a surgical mask, he unleashed a thick cloud of pepper spray and began attacking patrons with a hatchet.
He wounded one 58-year-old man, who sustained a superficial injury to the shoulder. Two other moviegoers, women aged 17 and 53, were treated for exposure to pepper spray. It is unclear how many other people were in the theater at the time.
The gunman then exchanged fire with officers arriving on the scene before he was killed by police inside the theater.
Speaking at a press conference on the scene, Nashville polices spokesman Don Aaron said, “We believe the imminent threat has been ended. However, the gunman had two backpacks with him. We want to make sure there is no danger with those backpacks.”
Bomb squad officers were on the scene to determine if there are any explosive devices in the backpacks. Nashville Police chief Steve Anderson later confirmed that one backpack contained what he called a “hoax device” that was not capable of exploding, while the other backpack contained nothing dangerous.
The Hickory 8, a second-run theater where tickets cost $2, is attached to a mall that was placed on lockdown while the local authorities responded to the situation.
The Antioch incident is the latest in a series of violent attacks at U.S. movie theaters in recent years, including a deadly assault on a Lafayette, Louisiana, theater during a screening of “Trainwreck” on July 23. Two people were killed in that incident before the gunman, 59-year-old John Russell Houser, took his own life.
Nashville mayor Karl Dean later released a statement on the incident, that read:
“I applaud the Metro Police Department for its great work to apprehend the suspect, keep our citizens and visitors safe, and prevent a tragedy in Antioch today. We have one of the best police forces in the nation, and it showed this afternoon in the way our officers lived up to their very thorough training. I recognize that this situation must have been traumatizing for everyone in the theater and many who were nearby, and I’m sorry that some were injured and needed treatment. I’m relieved that no one else was killed, and again, I thank the police for that.”