A naked shooter killed three people and injured at least four more early on Sunday at a restaurant on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, police report.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement that the shooting occurred at a Waffle House restaurant in Antioch, a suburb southeast of Nashville, at 3:25 am (0825 GMT).
“A patron wrestled away the gunman’s rifle. He was nude & fled on foot. He is a white man with short hair,” the statement added.
The statement named 29-year-old Travis Reinking, of Morton, Illinois a village located some 450 miles north of Antioch, as the lead suspect. Police reports put him arriving in a car registered to Reinking.
It added that the shooter, who had long since left his coat, was last seen at Murfreesboro Pike, where the 24-hour diner is located.
Eyewitnesses reported to local media stations that the shooter was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, a weapon commonly used by mass shooters in the US.
AR-15 rifles killed 58 people in Las Vegas last October, while Nikolas Cruz who committed an atrocity at a Florida school killed his former high school classmates with an AR-15 style rifle, killing 17 students and staff members.
Meanwhile, an ABC News/Washington Post poll published Friday suggested that support for a ban on assault weapons has risen sharply in the past few months.
Sixty-two percent of those polled said they support a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons, up from 50 percent in mid-February and 45 percent in late 2015.