Waffle House employee Stan Brudnicki wears a ribbon on his uniform to honor shooting victims Wednesday, April 25, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee residents living near a Waffle House where a gunman fatally shot four people have been filing into the restaurant to grab a meal and show their support for employees determined to carry on after the attack.
Workers who had expressed a desire to get the restaurant up and running quickly wore orange ribbons, wept, and hugged each other at Wednesday's reopening in Nashville. Company officials said they will donate a month of the restaurant's sales to help the wounded survivors and the families of the slain.
The parents of 20-year-old Joe Perez, one of the victims of the shooting Sunday morning, signed four white crosses outside, one of them bearing their son's name and picture.
A woman who was working during the attack, her face still bearing scrapes, knelt before the four white crosses erected to commemorate the victims.
The dead included Perez and Taurean Sanderlin, 29, who worked at the Waffle House. Sanderlin had been on a cigarette break in the parking lot when the killer stepped out of his truck brandishing an AR-15 rifle and opened fire. The gunman then stormed the restaurant.
Also killed were Akilah Dasilva, a 23-year-old student at Middle Tennessee State University who was well known to independent musicians and record labels in town, and DeEbony Groves, a 21-year-old student at Belmont University. Four people were also wounded.
Police credit James Shaw Jr., a customer who wrestled the weapon away from the gunman, for averting more bloodshed. The suspect fled after the scuffle with the customer and was captured the following day after a massive manhunt in Antioch, a neighborhood in southeastern Nashville. Police have identified him as Travis Reinking, 29.
Employees got emotional at times Wednesday, but they also thanked the customers for coming back to the restaurant.
"The Waffle House staff have been so wonderful, and I'm not sure I could hold up as well as they are in a situation like this," said Ramona Witt, who lives in the neighborhood and came out to support the victims.
Tammy Burnside stopped by to get food to go for herself and a friend.
"I just had to come by and pay my respects," she said of the victims. "When they died, it felt like something died in Nashville."
It was the employees who wanted to get the restaurant reopened quickly, Waffle House spokesman Pat Warner said.
"I think it's part of the healing process for them," Warner said.
Reinking was wearing nothing but a green jacket and brandishing the assault-style rifle when he attacked the restaurant, police say.
He faces multiple criminal charges, including four counts of criminal homicide. A public defender listed as his attorney has not responded to an email seeking comment.
Police say they still do not know of a motive for the crime.
The onetime crane operator bounced between states and suffered from delusions, sometimes talking about plans to marry singer Taylor Swift, friends and relatives told authorities.
He was detained by the Secret Service in July after he ventured into a forbidden area on the White House grounds and demanded to meet President Donald Trump.
A friend and former co-worker in Colorado, John Turley, told The Associated Press he never saw any hints of violence or aggression from Reinking during the months they knew each other.
"I can't tell you why he did what he did," Turley said Wednesday. "The person I knew would not have done this." Turley added, "He just seemed too passive a person."
Turley said also Reinking never expressed any allegiance to anti-government beliefs, nor did he seem to be racist or advocate white supremacy.
An audio recording released from a Nashville computer repair shop shows the shooting suspect was fearful that the techs at the store had tampered with his laptop. This came after Reinking took the computer to the shop because he thought it had been hacked, Robert Hartline, owner of Dang It Repair, said. Reinking can be heard in the recording calling the tech a liar and telling him to kill himself. This was about a week and a half before the killings.