Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. Nashville is the second largest city in Tennessee, after Memphis, and is the fourth largest city in the Southeastern United States. It is located on the Cumberland River in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the music, healthcare, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home to numerous colleges and universities. Reflecting the city's position in state government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for Middle Tennessee. It is known as a center of the music industry, earning it the nickname "Music City".
A man armed with a hatchet and a pellet gun unleashed a volley of pepper spray at audience members in a movie theater on Wednesday before being fired at by a police officer and shot dead by a SWAT team as he tried to escape out a back door, the police said. The man, identified as Vincente David Montano, 29, of Nashville, was carrying two backpacks and he wore a surgical mask, possibly to protect himself from the pepper spray he unleashed in large amounts during the showing of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” according to Don Aaron, Metro Nashville Police spokesman.
The entire event Wednesday took place in less than an hour. Mr. Aaron said the first call came in about 1:13 p.m., and that two officers outside for a traffic stop responded. An officer came into the theater and was fired upon by the attacker, Mr. Aaron said. The officer shot back, then backed off, Mr. Aaron said, but kept the gunman confined to one theater.
Since 1963, Nashville has had a consolidated city-county government which includes six smaller municipalities in a two-tier system. Thirty-five of 40 members are elected from single-member districts; five are elected at-large. According to the 2013 American Community Survey estimates, the consolidated county population stood at 658,602; not including the semi-independent municipalities, the population was 634,464.
The 2013 population of the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area was 1,757,912, making it the largest metropolitan statistical area in the state. The 2013 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area, a larger trade area, was 1,876,933.
