Vincente David Montano, 29, who was wearing a surgical mask and bought a ticket to enter the theater, reportedly began attacking people and spraying pepper spray during a showing of “Mad Max: Fury Road“.
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There were only eight people in the theater when Montano began filling the room with pepper spray, Aaron told CNN on Wednesday night.
Police work outside of the Grand Theatre after the shooting. The statement said Montano engaged SWAT officers inside the theater for several minutes, pulling the trigger of what turned out to be an airsoft pistol that resembled a semi-automatic pistol.
More than a dozen gunshots, fired in rapid succession, can be heard on the audio track of a cell phone video recorded during the shooting that killed Montano.
Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron says Montano had been treated at least four times for psychiatric issues. It wasn’t immediately clear why he had been committed or if that commitment was involuntary.
“This individual has had significant psychiatric or psychological issues”, Aaron said late Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
But police were called back two hours later and Montano was arrested, booked with simple assault on an officer and resisting arrest. He assaulted the victims with pepper spray and struck Steven with a hatchet, causing a minor injury.
“If you’re the first guy there, you’re going in”, said Frith, a Marine who served in combat.
“I still to this moment don’t think it’s real”, Roby said.
Some notified police officers, who had responded to a nearby traffic accident. “That’s when the officer fired his weapon at the suspect in that initial confrontation”, Aaron added.
Montano was last seen at the Nashville Rescue Mission before the attack.
This movie theatre attack is the second in just two weeks. Jurors there are in the process of determining whether Holmes, who carried out one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history inside an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012, should be put to death.
Aaron said Vincente David Montano started his attack by pepper-spraying two women who were sitting in the theater.
Officers say he let off huge amounts of red-tinted tear gas and slashed a man with his axe.
Montano was shot dead by police after they said he pointed a gun at an officer. However, Steven, his daughter and another woman suffered irritations from the pepper spray used by the suspect. “That kind of gives me a little more faith in humanity again”.
His backpack was detonated by the bomb squad just before 4 p.m.as authorities were not comfortable opening it. The suspect also had a smaller satchel with him.
In addition to his weapons, a backpack and a duffel bag, Montano had a canister of propane, lighter fluid and a lighter and may have intended to set off a blast, Aaron said. No one was taken to a hospital.
Authorities said they have not found a vehicle near or at the scene belonging to Montano, and they do not believe he had one.
When Montano emerged from the back of the theater holding a hatchet, a mix of officers and undercover detectives were there. The officer fired back and fatally wounded Montano, according to reports.
He described it as “utter chaos”.
On Wednesday afternoon, he walked into a Family Dollar near the movie theater.
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A police spokesman says the mother of a homeless man was visiting a relative about 30 miles from Nashville when she called police, anxious about her son.
