Could Someone Have Stopped Travis Reinking?

NASHVILLE, TN -- At 5:40 p.m., Tuesday, April 17, a young man parked his pick-up truck in a parking lot next to BMW of Nashville in the tony suburb of Brentwood. He walked calmly, crossing the dealership's lot and once inside, said he was interested in purchasing a car.

He talked to a salesperson about a test drive and, as is normal, was asked to provide identification as surety he'd return the car. The young man refused rather pointedly, striking the dealership's employees as an overreaction to a standard request. At some point, the young man had stolen a key fob to a 2018 BMW X6. Cutting off the identification argument, the man ran into the lot, leapt in the appropriate BMW and sped away, turning north on Mallory Lane.

The dealership contacted Brentwood Police and officers began a pursuit. But it was rush hour and the stretch of road heading out of Cool Springs and towards Brentwood proper is one of the busiest in Williamson County, just south of Nashville. The young man kept accelerating as patrol cars neared.

The officers' supervisor called off the chase. It was too risky, given the speed and time of day; besides, the late-model luxury car had GPS and would be easily tracked and recovered at much lower risk to the public.

Indeed, Metro Nashville Police found the X6 later Tuesday, parked outside an Antioch apartment complex, 10 or so miles as the crow flies northwest of the dealership. The car was recovered, but no arrests were made. The young man's image had been captured on surveillance inside the dealership, but no one knew who he was; after all, his refusal to turn over his license was what led to the argument in the first place.

That young man, police now say, was 29-year-old Travis Reinking, who 106 hours after stealing the car would allegedly kill four people at a Waffle House early Sunday morning, firing his AR-15 into the crowded all-night restaurant just a half-mile from his apartment complex. The apartment complex where the BMW was recovered Tuesday night. Among the items found during a search of Reinking's apartment: the key fob to the stolen car.

Obviously, there's no way the officers in the chase nor their supervisor could have known Tuesday what Reinking would allegedly do Sunday. Brentwood Police insist calling off the chase was in line with departmental policies that mirror those at most departments across the country and that Reinking wasn't linked to the theft until after he was named as the suspect in Sunday's shooting.

Apparently, once the car was recovered, no law enforcement officials knocked on doors to ask anyone if they'd seen someone driving the car.

"I’m not sure if Metro PD knocked on any doors, but I would not expect that they would," Brentwood Assistant Police Chief Tommy Walsh told Patch Tuesday. "We had assigned the case to a Detective last week who had started looking at video and other investigative tools, but Mr. Reinkings name did not come to our attention until Sunday morning after the shooting incident. If the vehicle had been recovered in Brentwood by our officers we would likely have knocked on doors and spoken to the neighbors, but in this case considering it was recovered by another agency and outside of our jurisdiction that did not happen. I am certainly not blaming Metro PD in any way."

Walsh said it "unfair to judge anything that we did or did not do based on what happened on Sunday morning."

Thus, Travis Reinking got away with stealing a luxury automobile right off the lot. It was the latest in a series of what-if moments with the accused killer dating back years that in hindsight add up to a heartwrenching question: could the deaths of Taurean Sanderlin, 29, Joe Perez, 20, DeEbony Groves, and Akilah Dasilva, 23, been prevented?

For nearly four years, those closest to Reinking had concerns about him. Back home in Morton, Illinois - the small town near Peoria where Reinking lived until August 2017 when he moved to Nashville, presumably to work as a crane operator in the Music City's construction boom - his grandmother and parents alerted police in May 2016 they were worried about him.

According to a report from the Tazewell County Sheriff's Department, on May 26, 2016, while sitting in a CVS parking lot, Reinking told a paramedic pop star Taylor Swift had been harassing him, hacking into his phone and Netflix account. The paramedic tried to convince Reinking to head to the hospital for an evaluation, but Reinking demurred and drove away, leaving his parents, the police and paramedic outside the drug store.

His family told the sheriff's deputy that Travis had talked about killing himself and that he had guns in his house. For some reason, shortly thereafter, Reinking swung back into the parking lot. He had more to say about Taylor Swift's campaign of harassment. Via his Netflix account, she'd told him to meet her at Morton's Dairy Queen. When he got there, she was across the street, yelling at him. He gave chase, he told the deputy, and Swift climbed the side of a building. He climbed too, but she was nowhere to be found when he got to the roof. He said he had evidence of all this on his phone, but wouldn't turn it over to the police.

Because he'd made suicidal comments, police told him he was going to be taken to the hospital. Travis railed about his constitutional rights being violated, but faced with six police officers, gave in.

By that time, Travis had been a legal firearms owner in Illinois for six years, having obtained a state firearm owners identification card in 2010. It was not set to expire until 2020.

Less than a month later, on June 16, 2016, Morton Police were called to a local public pool. A man had arrived wearing a "pink woman's house coat," which he shed upon arrival, diving into the water wearing nothing but his underwear. The lifeguards yelled at the man - identified as Reinking - to get out of the pool and Reinking asked the lifeguards if they wanted to fight, before pulling down his underwear, exposing his genitals and yelling that he was a man. No one at the pool pressed charges.

Earlier that day, employees at Reinking's father's crane company - Travis lived in an apartment above the company office - said the young man had come out of his apartment, began arguing with some of the workers and then left the property in the aforementioned house coat, carrying an AR-15, which he'd thrown in the trunk while saying "Is this what you want?".

Travis told police he had a valid FOID and that he didn't want to go to the hospital. After all, he'd been three weeks before. An officer called Travis' father who said he'd once taken four guns from his son, but that he'd given them back and that he'd secure them once he got back in town.

Reinking's behavior was escalating from threats against himself to threats against others. The strange behavior first noticed by his family in 2014 was now increasingly public. He'd been forced into a mental evaluation once already and refused one other time.

Travis Reinking still legally possessed four guns.

In early July 2017, he'd made his way to Washington, D.C. Wearing a necktie, he walked to the pedestrian entrance at the White House and asked how he could get a meeting with the president. The officer at the gate directed him to the tour entrance, but Travis didn't want a tour. He wanted a meeting with Donald Trump.

He told the officer he was a "sovereign citizen." The sovereign citizens movement is a loose connection of individuals - they aren't typically joiners, so there are few actual sovereign citizen organizations, just a network of like-minded people - who hold complicated, bizarre beliefs about the nature of government, hinging on a bafflingly complex theory that they can pick and choose laws to obey and that through endless court filings - which often refer to admiralty law, treaties between the British Crown and Native American tribes and antiquated and obsolete elements of common law - they can bifurcate themselves from a corporate shell version of their identity set up by the federal government at birth.

After making his claim of sovereignty, Reinking took off his tie and began to cross a security barrier, telling the guard "arrest me if you have to." And, indeed, the Secret Service did just that, charging him with unlawful entry.

Now Reinking was on the federal government's radar and now someone would indeed becoming for his guns.

Based on the Secret Service report and in consultation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Illinois State Police revoked Reinking's FOID and sent the Tazewell County Sheriff to his home at the crane yard.

According to the report, on August 24, 2017, Reinking helped the sheriff's deputies gather up four guns - a Kimber Pro Carry II semi-automatic .45-caliber handgun, a Bushmaster XM-15 AR-15-style rifle, a bolt-action .22-caliber rifle, and a Remington 710 .03-06 - and some ammunition. He turned over his FOID card, as required.

Then, assured that he'd keep the weapons away from his son, the deputies turned everything over to Reinking's father. On Sunday, the AR-15 was found at the Waffle House and the two hunting rifles in Travis' Antioch apartment. When he was arrested Monday, the pistol was in his backpack.

What's not clear is whether anyone broke the law, at least on the state level. Metro Nashville Chief of Police Steve Anderson - a licensed attorney - said Sunday that Reinking legally owned the guns in Tennessee, which has some of the most lenient firearms laws in the country, so much so that the FBI considers Tennessee a so-called "source state" through guns can laundered to people in states, like Illinois and California, with more stringent laws.

In Illinois, while its illegal to possess long guns without a FOID and it's illegal to give or sell them to anyone without one, "bona fide" gifts of guns to family members are permitted under the statute. It is also illegal, in some situations, to give guns to a person with some signs of mental illness.

It's possible that Reinking's father, Jeffery, did break federal law. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent Marcus Watson told reporters Monday that federal law prohibits providing firearms to someone who is not allowed to have them and that Jeffery Reinking "potentially" violated that law.

Patch was unable to reach Jeffery Reinking at the phone number listed for his crane business Monday or Tuesday.

Democrats in Tennessee's legislature are attempting to close what they call "a loophole" in the state's permissive gun laws.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, Rep. Mike Stewart, and Rep. Bill Beck, all of Nashville, announced Monday they were amending a bill which failed in committee earlier this year. Under the new language, it would be illegal for someone to buy or possess a gun if they've had guns confiscated in Tennessee or any other state and it would be illegal to sell or give a gun to a person known to have had guns confiscated.

Given that it's late in the session and the reluctance by the legislature's Republican supermajority to tighten up gun laws heretofore, the measure is unlikely to pass.

Meanwhile, four families - indeed, an entire city - ask: could Travis Reinking have been stopped?

Photo via Metro Nashville Police