Nashville Waffle House Shooting: Search For Gunman Continues

NASHVILLE, TN -- Thirty hours after killing four people at an Antioch Waffle House, suspected shooter Travis Reinking is still at-large.

Metro Police said officers, along with agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, searched through the night for 29-year-old Reinking. There has not been a credible sighting of him since Sunday morning, when he was seen wearing black pants and no shirt in a tree line near his Antioch apartment complex.

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Reinking is accused of killing four people - 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 - when he opened fire with an AR-15 at the Murfreesboro Pike restaurant around 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Two women who were hospitalized after the shooting were upgraded to stable condition Monday.

He ran from the restaurant after 29-year-old James Shaw Jr. wrestled him to the ground, muscled away the rifle and tossed it over a counter. He was seen running down Murfreesboro Pike shortly thereafter and then again in the wood line later Sunday morning.

Metro Police cleared Antioch and Cane Ridge area schools overnight. Those schools are operating under lockout procedures Monday. In a lockout situation, students can move through the building as usual, but outside entrances are secure and parents must notify the school before picking up students for early dismissal. Metro Police said additional security was on hand at those schools, as well.

Searchers are operating from a temporary command post in a shopping center parking lot, across Murfreesboro Pike from the restaurant. Uniformed officers are stationed in patrol cars up and down area streets as search teams fan out through the area.

Reinking was arrested in July 2017 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 Reinking's father, who holds a firearms authorization. Authorities believe the father then returned the guns to his son. The weapons included the AR-15 found at the Waffle House, along with two others which have been recovered. A pistol has not been found and Reinking may have it with him, according to police.

Photo via Metro Nashville Police