A truck driver fatally stabbed three people and wounded another at a Tennessee travel center Tuesday before he was killed by a sheriff’s deputy, authorities said.
A motive for the rampage outside Knoxville is not known, said Leslie Earhart, a public information officer for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Idris Abdus-Salaam, 51, a truck driver from Durham, North Carolina, was shot and killed after attacking four people at the Pilot Travel Center, the TBI said.
Officials said that when Knox County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the travel center about 7 am, they found one person who had been stabbed outside the store and a man armed with a knife in the parking lot.
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“Officers confronted the individual who refused to drop the weapon,” the TBI said . “At some point during the encounter, one of the officers fired shots, striking the man. He was pronounced dead at the scene.”
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The three people who were killed were employees at the travel center, and the fourth victim was a customer, Pilot CEO Jimmy Haslam said in a statement provided to NBC affiliate WBIR of Knoxville .
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