The man shot dead by police after wielding pepper spray, an ax, a pellet gun and a fake bomb in a suburban Nashville movie theater has been named as Vincente David Montano, a 29-year-old with a history of mental health issues.

Montano was pronounced dead outside the back door of the theater in Antioch where people had been watching Mad Max: Fury Road on Wednesday.

Three people were treated afterwards for exposure to pepper spray, including a 58-year-old man who also had a superficial wound to his shoulder, likely from the ax, said Brian Haas of the Nashville fire department. None of the victims were taken to hospital.

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Montano had a device in a backpack that was supposed to look like a bomb and police detonated it as a precaution after he was killed.



The gun he was carrying looked like a real firearm but was an airsoft pistol, Nashville police said. The replica pistols fire plastic or aluminum pellets.

Police spokesman Dan Aaron told the Nashville Tennessean that Montano had been committed for mental health care four times, in 2004 and 2007, and arrested on an assault charge in 2004. He was reported as a missing person on Monday.

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Aaron said police officers at an accident scene nearby quickly responded to the reports of a gunman at the theater. One entered the theater and was shot at by Montano. The officer returned fire and waited for backup.

Montano was eventually shot dead by a Swat team as he came out a back door, Aaron said.

The violence at the Carmike Hickory 8 complex comes about two weeks after a 59-year-old man opened fire inside a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, fatally shooting two before killing himself. Meanwhile jurors in Colorado were deciding whether James Holmes, who killed 12 and injured 70 others during a theater shooting in 2012, should receive the death penalty.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report