Authorities said that a shooting inside a Nashville, Tennessee, restaurant during Easter brunch in the afternoon killed one man and injured five others.
According to CBS Nashville station WTVF-TV, a pregnant woman was transported to the hospital after having a panic attack.
The incident began around 3 p.m. in the city’s Salemtown district, only minutes after the male suspect arrived at Roasted restaurant with a woman, according to police.
The suspect and the man who died got into a fight that “significantly escalated within moments,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron said at a news conference on the site.
“It’s Easter Sunday; everybody’s dressed up, which is the last thing you’d expect,” Carly Payne, who lives nearby and witnessed the aftermath, told WTVF. “My heart was out of my chest; I knew I needed to get inside, and then obviously I knew the first thing was to call 911.”
Police later identified the deceased guy as Allen Beachem, 33. Authorities reported that the other victims did not sustain critical injuries.
Police identified a 46-year-old suspect and the Mercedes GLS 450 he fled in, using photographs from the restaurant’s CCTV video. As the search for the suspect continued Sunday, authorities shared photographs of the shooting scene on social media, including one showing a guy brandishing a firearm.
“The gunman was the only one brandishing a weapon. This was not a shootout; it was one person who decided to pull out a gun after an encounter with another man and then fired multiple shots,” Aaron added.
According to Police Commander Anthony McClain, customers attempted to flee the eatery, causing panic inside.
“Some people did try to resist the gunman,” McClain said. “It was just mass chaos.”
According to Aaron, investigators were in local hospitals on Sunday interviewing victims to determine what happened.
“It may have been something as simple as one person invading another person’s space,” he went on to say.
