Defendant has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity
By Travis Loller
Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A man who shot and killed four people at a Nashville Waffle House in 2018 posted videos to YouTube in the years before the killing where he spoke about unknown people who he believed were breaking into his home.
Attorneys for Travis Reinking played a video in court on Thursday that the 33-year-old made in 2017 where he claims to know that someone was in his apartment because the toilet seat was left up, a door was cracked, and there were fingerprints on the side of his laptop.
“Why is somebody coming in my apartment and doing this stuff? Why is someone going into my bathroom?” he asks during the rambling monologue. Later he says, “They’re afraid and they expect me not to be? These people are insane. I don’t know why I have to be mean to people and call people names” to get them to leave him alone.
Reinking’s charges include four counts of first degree murder for killing Taurean Sanderlin, 29; Joe Perez, 20; Akilah Dasilva, 23; and DeEbony Groves, 21, in the early morning of April 22, 2018. Prosecutors are seeking a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole.
Reinking, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. To prove that, the defense has to convince the jury that Reinking’s mental illness made him unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions.
Reinking wrote in his journal and told psychologists who examined him that he believed people in the Waffle House were poisoning his food and repeating things that he had written in his private journal. He said he prayed about what to do and received a command from God to go to the Waffle House and shoot three people, according to testimony.
In cross-examination on Thursday, prosecutors tried to show that in spite of his paranoid delusions, Reinking knew that shooting people was wrong.
Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Jan Norman mentioned an incident days before the shooting in which Reinking stole a BMW from a dealership while test-driving it. After the car was located by police and taken back the next day, Reinking wrote in his journal: “This time I would have to punish them by taking something they couldn’t take back, some of their own lives.”
Norman also emphasized Reinking’s own account of the shooting where he says that after killing Perez, “I felt like I was going to throw up because this was something God told me to do but it felt evil.”
Asked if that wasn’t an indication that Reinking knew what he was doing was wrong, Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute psychologist Rena Isen said no. She said Reiking’s actions could be understood like that of someone in combat who is ordered to kill. That person might feel sick about it while still not believing it is wrong.
Reinking also told psychologists that the CIA and FBI were trying to bate him into shooting people at the Waffle House, which Norman suggested was inconsistent with his statements that he was commanded by God to shoot people. Norman pointed out that Reinking shot more than three people. In addition to the four people he killed, he seriously wounded Sharita Henderson and Shantia Waggoner. Kayla Shaw and James Shaw Jr., who are not related, suffered lesser injuries.
Defense attorneys do not dispute the basic facts of the case. Reinking was naked save for a green jacket when he opened fire inside the restaurant just after 3:20 a.m. on a Sunday. He fled, triggering a manhunt, after restaurant patron James Shaw Jr. wrestled his assault-style rifle away from him.
Shaw was among those survivors and first responders who gave emotional testimony about the shooting in the first two days of the trial.
