Nashville Theater Shooting: Alleged Gunman with Hatchet, Found Strapped to ‘Hoax Explosive Device’
Welcome to this week’s installment of the “Daily Shooter,” another episode tailormade for American audiences…
According to authorities, a man armed with a gun, pepper spray and a hatchet, was killed Wednesday afternoon after a fire fight with law enforcement officers in a movie theater outside Nashville, Tennessee.
UPDATE* – Authorities reveal the alleged gunman’s identity – As 29 year-old Vincente David Montano from Nasville.
The main suspect, was listed as a “51-year-old white local man,” who was shot by police upon leaving the Carmike Hickory 8 Theater in the town of Antioch, while at a screening of Mad Max: Fury Road.
However, reports now state that the gunman was a 29-year-old white male.
The change in the alleged shooter’s age is a strange twist to an already scripted-like story.
All told, the main suspect was the only person killed in the incident, as three others were treated after being pepper sprayed at the scene.
ABC reports: “As he fled out the back, Montano encountered a SWAT team and was shot dead, Aaron said. About two dozen gunshots could be heard in a 10-second period in raw video footage posted online by WKRN TV.”
The whole scene sounds very similar to the heavily staged Canada shooting last year.
The latest Tennessee shooting, comes just two weeks after a suspicious theater shooting in Lafayette and three weeks after a bizarre shooting incident in Chattanooga at a military facility, along with being nearly six weeks after the polarizing shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. All of these shooting events come as jurors in the trial for the Aurora Theater Shooting decide the fate of ‘mentally ill’ lone gunman, James Holmes, who killed 12 and injured 70 others during his alleged shooting spree in 2012. Holmes may face the death penalty.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen how these televised shooting events have become a staple part of our day to day lives, complete with identical gunman profiles, media talking points and staged press conferences – a buffet laid out for America, and always within just minutes or hours of each alleged ‘active shooter’ event.
Operation Overkill
According to reports and Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department:
“The only person shot was the suspect as he emerged out of the rear door,” Aaron said. There were eight people, including the gunman, at the time of the attack, he said.
Police were called to the theater, which was playing “Mad Max: Fury Road,” at around 1:15 p.m. local time (2:15 p.m. ET) and officers arrived “within minutes” Aaron said. The gunman was wearing a backpack worn on the front of his chest and was wearing a surgical mask.”
So officers just happened to be there at the theater. What a lucky break. And then, as if by magic, over 100 officers and agents from 10 different local and federal law enforcement agencies and EMS units – all appear at the scene. Within minutes, you had the Nashville Metro Police, ATF, SWAT Teams, TBI, FBI, DHS, Fire Department (with 3 fire trucks) EMS (at least 4 ambulances), Highway Patrol, and last but not least – the Bomb Squad. If there was ever a multi-agency ‘active shooter’ or crisis management drill – this certainly was it.
A woman who worked at a Sprint store near the scene told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin that about three hours earlier, a man with two backpacks tried to enter her store through their back door.
With so many ‘theatrical’ shootings occurring back-to-back – you have to wonder if the entire event wasn’t a police drill meant to test both “security and emergency protocols.”
Exactly like the recent shootings in Charleston, Chattanooga and Lafayette, the Nashville shooting featured a gunman suffering from “mental illness”. In a CNN report were told Montano had a history of mental illness and had been missing for two days according to police reports:
Vincente David Montano was committed twice in 2004 and twice in 2007, said Aaron, citing officials in Rutherford County. Montano had been arrested Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 2004 in a case of assault and resisting arrest, police said.
“We have no motive for (Wednesday’s attack),” Aaron said.
Montano had an airsoft pistol with him that he aimed and fired at police in the theater, Aaron said. Such a weapon looks like a semiautomatic pistol but fires plastic or BB pellets.
Montano’s mother filed a missing person’s report with Texas Rangers two days ago and they had notified authorities in Tennessee, Aaron said.
In the report, his mother, Denise Pruitt, told authorities that Montano was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2006.
“Ms. Pruitt advised Vincente has several other health issues and has a hard time taking care of himself,” the report says. It lists his address as “homeless.”
Pruitt, who lives in Florida, last saw her son in Illinois in March 2013.
Montano’s history of mental illness, trouble with the law and overall ‘drifter’ persona, provides the typical backdrop of a law enforcement informant or patsy – someone who could be used during a staged drill.
One of the apparent victims, who has elected to only use his first name, was injured by the hatchet wielding gunman with a backpack. Here is portion of that report below:
The man who was injured by the axe, who only identified himself as Steven, said he has no idea why he and his family were attacked. A 53-year-old woman, and a 17-year-old woman were also treated for pepper spray exposure, officials said.
“I would ask anyone to pray for his family, because he obviously has mental problems or something else,” Steven told reporters.”
“I’m very, very grateful that no one else got injured here today other than the person who perpetrated this,” he said, and thanked police for their swift response.
Miraculously, police were nearby at a traffic accident when a group of people ‘ran over’ to alert them that gunman was in the theater.
Authorities will likely ‘shore-up’ the timeline of events very soon explaining the use pepper spray on three apparent victims, and the ‘hoax device’ strapped to the alleged shooter, whose identity they have seemingly withheld to this point.
Bizarrely, Brian Haas, a public affairs officer for the Nashville Fire Department, remarked that injuries sustained during the incident looked like “bruises.”
If the victim was truly ‘attacked’ with a hatchet), then how on earth did he only sustain a bruise?
In another conflicting report, CNN reported that the victim (Steven) suffered minor cuts: “(Don) Aaron told reporters that one patron at the screening of “Mad Max: Fury Road” suffered a minor cut on a shoulder from a hatchet before officers killed the suspect.”
Was he bruised, or cut?
The Tennessean reports the following:
After the incident, police discovered two suspicious backpacks: One on the suspect and one left in the theater. By 4 p.m., they had detonated one of the bags. Police determined the bag strapped to the suspect’s chest contained a hoax explosive device.A second bag, found inside the theater, had yet to be detonated. A bomb squad is on the scene.
Many critics of these types of events, have long asserted that ‘crisis actors’ are often used during police active-shooter drills and that at any moment those events could go live.
The idea that staged recreations of a shooting scenarios “improve response times and inter-agency organization” is not much better than ‘hair-trigger’ video game culture we live in. The new‘shoot first’ methodology we see in today’s law enforcement operations – pushes the public into accepting new “rules of engagement” based on new, fear-based ‘anti-government’ profiling.
Over the next 24 hours, you will see the media, along with those others at the scene, turn this incident into a PR packed event with new mental health proposals and predictable tales for heroism.
Here you can see the drill-like look of the event at Hickory Hallow Mall…
Lights, camera, action – more from RT below…
‘Heavy Response’ – Over 100 police and agents gather, hang out for hours, talking in groups – outside a cinema near Nashville. (Photo newsnet5)
RT.com
A SWAT team responded to an active shooter situation at the Carmike Hickory 8 theater in the 900 block of Bell Road in Antioch, a suburb southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Officials say the attacker had a gun and a hatchet. The movie was reportedly ‘Mad Max’.
It is unclear whether the suspected shooter was killed by a police officer who helped evacuate the theater, or by the SWAT team that responded to the emergency. His dead body was found inside the theater after the SWAT secured the building.
Three patients have been treated for pepper-spray exposure, while one had “superficial wounds” probably caused by a hatchet, according to Brian Haas, public affairs officer for the Nashville Fire Department. He described the injuries as “bruises” on the person’s shoulder.