Ax man killed in Nashville cinema attack

Police have shot dead a man wielding an ax, a replica handgun and pepper spray at a movie theater near Nashville, in terrifying echoes of two previous cinema shootings.
With only the attacker killed and three others slightly hurt, authorities said yesterday the outcome could have been much worse, hailing the rapid response of police who were at the theater in mere minutes.
The man, who police identified as 29-year-old Vincente David Montano, also wore a backpack that was strapped to the front of his body and wore a surgical mask, perhaps to protect himself from the chemical spray.
It later transpired that he was carrying an airsoft pellet gun, not a real gun, although police did not know that at the time. The backpack, it turned out, contained what Nashville police chief Steve Anderson called "a device configured to look like an explosive. It was not."

A second backpack left at the scene was also deemed not threatening, Anderson said.
The man entered the theater, where "Mad Max: Fury Road" was playing, and fired pepper spray at viewers before an officer burst in through the projection room, followed by a SWAT team.

The police officer shot at the man, who took aim back before fleeing through a back door of the cinema, where he ran into several more officers.
"He was shot, fatally wounded, and has been pronounced deceased at the scene," said Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron.
Police said Montano had been arrested on an assault charge in 2004 and had been committed for mental health care on four occasions, according to the Tennessean newspaper.

He was reported as a missing person on Monday, the newspaper said, citing Aaron.
A shaken witness who was reportedly struck with pepper spray along with his daughter thanked police for saving their lives.
"I'm very, very grateful that no one else got injured here today, other than the person who perpetrated this," he said, without providing his name.
A 58-year-old man sustained "superficial" injuries to his shoulder and arm from the ax and was also hit with the pepper spray, said Nashville Fire Department spokesman Brian Haas.
Two women, aged 17 and 53, were hit in the face with the spray, but no one else was being transferred to nearby hospitals and the area was later deemed safe.