Police kill man wielding hatchet, pellet gun at theater

ANTIOCH, Tenn. -- A man armed with a hatchet and a pellet gun unleashed a volley of pepper spray at audience members inside a movie theater Wednesday before being fired at by a police officer and shot dead by a SWAT team as he tried to escape out a back door, police said.

The attacker, identified as Vincente David Montano, 29, of Nashville was carrying two backpacks, one of which hung from his chest, and he wore a surgical mask, possibly to protect himself from the pepper spray he unleashed in large amounts during the showing of "Mad Max: Fury Road," Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said.

Aaron said three people were blasted with the spray and treated. There were eight people in the theater, including the assailant, Aaron said.

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 10 seconds in raw video footage posted online by WKRN-TV. Police initially said Montano had been armed with a gun, and he exchanged fire with the first responding officer, but Aaron said later Wednesday he had been armed with a pellet gun.

The violence at the Carmike Hickory 8 complex comes about two weeks after a 59-year-old drifter opened fire inside a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, fatally shooting two before killing himself.

One of the people hit with the pepper spray in the theater also suffered a cut evidently caused by a hatchet, Aaron said. Aaron identified the victim only as Steven because he said the man did not want to bring any more attention to his family.

"The only thing that I would like to say is that I'm eternally grateful to the Metro Police Department for their fast response today, and the fact that no one else got injured other than the person who did this," Steven said.

"And I would also like to thank all the citizens who gathered around us, helped my daughter when we were pepper sprayed. That kind of gives me a little bit more faith in humanity again."

Steven added he had "no idea why this gentleman decided to attack us."

One of Montano's two backpacks was detonated, then found to contain a fake bomb, Aaron said. He said investigators were going through a second backpack Montano left at the theater. No one was taken to a hospital.

The only person shot was Montano, whose motive was unclear, Aaron said.

"This individual has had significant psychiatric or psychological issues," Aaron said. "He had been committed four times, twice in 2004 and twice in 2007," and was arrested in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 2004 for assault and resisting arrest.

Aaron said a fingerprint taken at the theater Wednesday matched that from Montano's arrest.

The event Wednesday transpired over less than an hour. Aaron said the first call came in at 1:13 p.m., and two officers in the midst of a traffic stop responded within two minutes just as witnesses ran toward them.

An officer came into the theater and was fired upon by the attacker, Aaron said. The officer shot back, then backed off but the officer kept the gunman confined to one theater in the complex, , Aaron said.

Erick Vale, 32, an Uber driver, said he was dropping off passengers in the theater's parking lot when he heard gunshots.

He described it as "utter chaos."

"I just couldn't believe this was happening again," he said.

Mattie Sanchez works at the Sprint store near the theater. She said a man with two backpacks who fit the description of the attacker tried to enter a back door of the store about 11 a.m.

Sanchez said she heard what sounded like "rapid fire" and saw the large police presence later.

The theater complex sits in a commercial area in Antioch, a middle-class community in the southern part of Nashville. It's next to the Global Crossing mall, a past-its-prime shopping area recently upgraded with an ice rink developed by the Nashville Predators professional hockey team.

Anderson said violence like Wednesday's shooting are likely to happen "anywhere we gather," then added: "This is maybe what we call the new normal. We can't say we're not going to theaters, we can't say we're not going to church. We carry on."