Theater attacker had fake bomb, police say

A gunman wearing a surgical mask and wielding an ax opened fire on Wednesday at a Nashville-area theater showing of the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” and was shot dead by police after injuring three people when he doused the theater with pepper spray, authorities said.

The suspect was shot and killed by swat teams after he fired on the officer inside the Carmike Hickory 8 theater in the suburb of Antioch.

Aaron said police officers working an accident scene nearby quickly responded to the reports of a gunman at the theater.

Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron says the victims – one man and two women – are being interviewed by police.

One person is reported to have suffered a minor hatchet wound, but did not require hospitalization. Fire department spokesman Brian Haas said three people were treated for exposure to pepper spray, and one of those people had a superficial wound that could have been caused by a hatchet.

Police have identified the assailant in the Tennessee movie theater attack as a 29-year-old man who had been committed four times for psychiatric treatment.

As he fled out the back, the attacker encountered a SWAT team and was shot dead, Aaron said. Earlier they said he was a 51-year-old local man, but now they say he was 29. The suspect was then found dead. She told The Associated Press by phone that a man who had two backpacks and fit the description of the attacker tried to enter a backdoor of the store about 11 a.m.

Aaron says an officer came into the theater and was fired upon by the suspect.

No other details were immediately available.

This latest cinema incident comes less than two weeks after another movie theatre shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana – John Russell Houser fatally shot two women during a screening of Amy Schumer’s comedy Trainwreck at the Grand Theatre before turning the gun on himself.

Haas said further details would need to be released by police. It also happened while jurors in Colorado decide whether the man who killed 12 and injured 70 others during a theater shooting in 2012 should receive the death penalty.