Travis Reinking once told law enforcement officers that the singer Taylor Swift had been harassing and stalking him — a delusion that authorities in Illinois said Reinking had had for years.
In 2017, the year before Reinking became the subject of an intensive police manhunt after a deadly shooting at a Tennessee Waffle House, officials said he went to a local pool wearing a pink dress and swam in his underwear while coaxing life guards to fight him. Soon after, he traveled to D.C., and tried to cross a security barrier near the White House, declaring himself a “sovereign citizen” who wanted to speak with President Trump.
Police reports dating to May 2016 offer a glimpse of what officials described as Reinking’s “mental problems.” The reports also reveal that, despite Reinking’s history, he was in possession of several firearms and a gun license in Illinois. His license was revoked and his firearms were confiscated after the incident at the White House last summer, but officials said the weapons later landed back in Reinking’s hands.
Early Sunday, police say the 29-year-old man from Morton, Ill., used a previously confiscated semiautomatic AR-15 rifle in a shooting rampage at a Waffle House in the Nashville area.
Four people were killed in the shooting, and the frantic search for Reinking continued Monday as schools in the Nashville area were placed in “lockout” mode.
The Metro Nashville Police Department said Monday morning that “there have been no credible sightings” of the suspected gunman after an overnight search by local, state and federal law enforcement officers. Reinking, police said, was last seen Sunday morning in a wooded area behind his apartment, where he had been living for several months.
One other weapon that had been previously confiscated, a pistol, remains unaccounted for.
Authorities say Reinking, wearing nothing but a green jacket, opened fire at the Waffle House restaurant in Antioch, a neighborhood southeast of downtown Nashville, just before 3:30 a.m. Sunday. He had been sitting in his pickup truck at the Waffle House for a few minutes, looking around, before he got out and immediately began shooting at customers in the parking lot, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron said.
The man kept shooting as he walked inside, shattering the restaurant’s glass windows. At one point, he stopped, presumably to reload. That’s when police say a customer, James Shaw Jr., lunged at the gunman, wrestled the weapon away from him and tossed it over the counter.
[James Shaw Jr. on why he rushed the Waffle House shooter: ‘He was going to have to work to kill me’]
Among the victims was 29-year-old Taurean C. Sanderlin of Goodlettsville, Tenn., a restaurant employee who was fatally shot while standing outside. The others killed were customers: Joe R. Perez, 20, of Nashville; Deebony Groves, 21, of Gallatin, Tenn.; and Akilah Dasilva, 23, of Antioch.
Two others — Shanita Waggoner, 21, of Nashville, and Sharita Henderson, 24, of Antioch — were hospitalized at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, police said. They were in stable condition Monday, hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Wetzel said.
It was not immediately clear how or why Reinking obtained a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card in Illinois, or whether he had been diagnosed with any mental illness before he moved to Tennessee. Illinois state law prohibits someone who’s been “adjudicated as a mental defective” or has been a patient at a mental institution from obtaining a firearm license.
But documents released by the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois paint a picture of what they described as a troubled — and armed — man who had talked about killing himself.
Late at night on May 26, 2016, an emergency response officer found Reinking at a CVS parking lot in Morton, where his family lives. Reinking believed that pop star Taylor Swift had been hacking his phone and that his family was involved in the harassment.
According to a police report, he told a bizarre story about a Dairy Queen meetup with Swift that ended with Reinking looking for the singer on the restaurant’s rooftop. The police report says Reinking was eventually taken to a hospital to be evaluated.
On June 16, 2017, officials say Reinking — who was living inside a shop above the offices of his father’s construction business in Tremont, Ill. — screamed at two employees before driving away wearing a pink dress and carrying an AR-15 rifle. He showed up minutes later at a local pool, jumped into the water wearing only his underwear and exposed himself to the lifeguards, a police report says.
Reinking’s father and sister both told officials that they would try to keep the weapons away from Reinking until he got some psychological help, the report says.
[Mass shooting statistics: The terrible numbers that grow with each mass shooting]
A month later, he was arrested in Washington for trying to cross a security barrier near the White House.
A D.C. police report says Reinking told authorities he had to get to the building to speak with the president, and that “he was a sovereign citizen and has a right to inspect the grounds.” Sovereign citizens are viewed by the FBI as anti-government extremists who believe they are not subject to governmental laws, and law enforcement officials have described them as a major concern.
An officer told Reinking to move because he was blocking a pedestrian entrance at the White House, but Reinking “began to take his tie off and balled it into a fist” while walking past the security barriers and toward an officer, the police report says.
“Do what you need to do,” Reinking said, according to the report. “Arrest me if you have to.”
Reinking was charged with unlawful entry, a misdemeanor, officials said. He later entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office.
He was ordered to perform 32 hours of community service at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Morton and to stay away from the White House for four months. He mowed grass, ran a forklift to move pallets of food, and packaged food for distribution to local food banks as well as hygiene packets for hurricane disaster relief. A letter signed by the church’s pastor, the Rev. Steven. E. Hauter, says Reinking completed 33.5 hours of community service.
A woman who answered the phone at the church Monday said Hauter, was “not available and we have no comments.”
Prosecutors dismissed the case against Reinking in November after he completed the terms of the agreement.
After an investigation by the FBI office in Springfield, Ill., state and local officials confiscated Reinking’s guns and revoked his firearm license in August. The weapons were given to Reinking’s father, who agreed to keep them secure and away from Reinking, officials said. But the father later acknowledged giving the weapons back to his son, who had moved to Tennessee.
Under Illinois law, certain confiscated guns can be released to a family member, but Reinking could not lawfully possess the weapons in that state. It’s unclear whether possessing the weapons was illegal in Tennessee.
A woman who answered Sunday at a number registered to Reinking’s relatives in Illinois said, “We have no comment.”
Police said Reinking moved to the Nashville area last fall and worked in the construction industry. Aaron, the police spokesman, said he was fired from a job about three weeks ago and was later hired by another employer. Reinking had not been to work since Monday.
The Waffle House shooting rattled the working-class neighborhood in Antioch, where a masked gunman opened fire at a church last year, killing a woman and wounding several other people. Emanuel K. Samson, 26, was arrested in that shooting.
It also comes at a time of intensified debate over guns and a swirling controversy about the AR-15, a type of weapon used in several mass shootings recently and dubbed “America’s rifle” by the National Rifle Association.
“It makes me nervous, him not caught yet,” Erin Steward, a cashier at an Exxon gas station in Antioch, said Monday. “I’m being more cautious of my surroundings. It makes you kind of on edge.”
Beer delivery driver Ethan Loxley said that attitude has become commonplace along his Antioch delivery route — a departure from the “nice, laid-back” community he knew before the separate shootings rocked two mainstays of local culture: middle-of-the-night dining at Waffle House and Sunday morning worship at a church.
Brandon Gee from Antioch and Devlin Barrett, Mark Berman and Keith L. Alexander in Washington contributed to this report.
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