Nashville Police Arrest Man Who Says He Attacked Out Of Anger Over Pandemic Closures

Police in Nashville say a man has confessed to a brutal and random attack with a machete, and that he claims he carried it out to demonstrate his anger over pandemic-related shutdowns.

Police say they arrested Kelvin Edwards, 35, on Sunday afternoon at the Public Storage facility on 5th Avenue South near downtown. He faces two counts of attempted murder after what police described as a “callous, unprovoked and random machete attack on a husband and wife.”

Edwards, who is homeless, told a detective he was angry about closures and that he couldn’t get into the Nashville Rescue Mission, where authorities have been dealing with an outbreak of the coronavirus.

Six officers, meanwhile, are being credited with lifesaving responses to the two victims, who’d been repeatedly slashed. They applied multiple tourniquets to the couple. They are in critical condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.