Tenn. Theater Attacker Had Gashed Propane Tank

“The credit really goes to Officer Frith“, Swoner said. He requested a cup of water, then sat in the theater and allegedly stared down two women.

Three people were injured when Montano doused the theater with pepper spray, including one man who also suffered a superficial hatchet wound from the assailant.

Montano engaged SWAT officers inside the theater for several minutes, pulling the trigger of what turned out to be an airsoft pistol that closely resembled a semi-automatic pistol. The officer shot back, then backed off but, Aaron said, the officer kept the gunman confined to a single theatre in the complex.

Police originally said that the suspect was 51 years old, but later revealed that their information was wrong and he was in fact 29. Officers believed Montano could have had explosives and deemed him an imminent threat.

Officers arrived at their home on Briar Bend Drive and Denise Pruett told them her son “has been having thoughts of suicide, as well as homicide”, according to the police report. Neighbors still remember Vincente Montano and his family though they haven’t seen him in years.

He was killed by police.

“All of the citizens who gathered around us helped my daughter when we were pepper sprayed”, the father, Steven, said.

A 29-year-old man with a history of psychiatric issues was killed after unleashing pepper spray inside a Tennessee movie theater and attacking a man with a hatchet.

Vincente David Montano, 29, was later killed by police.

“This is maybe what we call the new normal”, Metro Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson said. He was committed twice that year and two more times in 2007.

Nashville Metro Police officers exit the movie theater following a shooting Wednesday, August 5, 2015, in Antioch, Tenn.

The incident comes less than two weeks after a gunman opened fire in a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, killing two people and wounding nine others before taking his own life.

Montano had “significant psychiatric or psychological issues”, Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference late Wednesday. He assaulted the victims with pepper spray and struck Steven with a hatchet, causing a minor injury. The man intervened and he was wounded by an ax that Montano was carrying. Ironically, the Aurora theater Holmes targeted was also a gun free zone.

A SWAT team shot him dead as he tried to leave the theater through a back door.

The report says Montano was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in April 2006. He broke a coffee table and a jewelry box.

Police are still researching his background.

Frith said during a press conference that he and three other officers responded to the theater.

The man shot dead by Tennessee police after a movie theater attack also has a warrant out for his arrest in Rockford.

Records indicate Montano was born in Illinois, then moved to Murfreesboro with his mother after she purchased a house on Briar Bend Drive.

Metro Nashville police said in a tweet earlier on Wednesday that there was an active shooter situation at the Carmike Hickory 8 cinema, in a suburb of the city in Tennessee. This week, she reported him missing.

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