Was the Gunman Wearing a Clown Mask in the Antioch Burnette Chapel Church Shooting?

At least one person has died and at least six were injured after a gunman opened fire at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee near Nashville today. Shortly after the shooting started, rumors began circulating that the gunman was wearing a clown mask when he started shooting. According to the most recent police briefing, it appears that the shooter was actually wearing something more like a ski mask.

Here are the details.

Shortly after the shooting began, a 911 caller told police that the shooter was wearing a “clown mask,” according to dispatch audio recorded from a police scanner. The gunman’s name has not yet been released.

All units, be advised we’ve got an active shooter… Burnette Chapel Church. At this time we’ve got multiple patients, a suspect wearing a clown mask, still going to be active.”

You can listen to the audio below, courtesy of Broadcastify.com. Heavy has edited the audio to remove dead air:

https://heavy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/antioch-1109-1139.mp3?_=1

But during a briefing later, police said that the gunman was wearing a “neoprene ski type mask.” Don Aaron, a police spokesman, told reporters that rumors the gunman was wearing a clown mask did not appear to be true.

The mask was “more like what you would see on a skier,” Aaron said.

A witness who spoke to a local news station earlier had also said the shooter was wearing a clown mask.

According to police, early reports that the gunman sat down and then began shooting aren’t true. He started in the parking lot and then continued inside the church. According to local news reports, he also went into a children’s classroom and told teachers not to let the kids out.

It’s unclear at this time why witnesses believed the shooter had on a clown mask, or if the ski mask had some type of design on it that started the original reports. We will update this story as we have more information.

Read more about the shooting in Heavy’s story below:

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