On a late Sunday evening in Hermitage, Tennessee, the night of March 23, 1997, turned tragic for 27-year-old Ronald Santiago and his co-workers at a McDonald's restaurant. As they were leaving after their shifts, a man forced them back inside at gunpoint. The assailant, later identified as Paul Dennis Reid Jr., herded Santiago, Andrea Brown, 17, Robert A. Sewell, 23, and another employee into the storeroom. After robbing the restaurant, Reid opened fire on the employees.
Ronald Santiago, Andrea Brown, and Robert Sewell were fatally shot. A fourth employee survived when Reid's gun malfunctioned; he was then stabbed multiple times but pretended to be dead and lived to identify the attacker.
The murders at the McDonald's were part of a string of violent robberies at fast-food restaurants in the Nashville area that had started earlier that year. Just a month prior, in February 1997, two employees at a Captain D's restaurant in Donelson had been murdered in a similar fashion. This series of crimes created an atmosphere of fear throughout the community as law enforcement hunted for the man who would become known as the 'Fast Food Killer.' Reid, a drifter who had moved to Nashville to pursue a career in country music, was on parole from a previous conviction in Texas at the time of the murders.
The investigation into the murders led police to Paul Dennis Reid Jr. after he attempted to kidnap a manager at a Shoney's restaurant in June 1997. The surviving victim from the McDonald's shooting positively identified Reid as the attacker. Reid was subsequently arrested and charged with the murders.
In 1999, Paul Dennis Reid Jr. was convicted in three separate trials for seven counts of first-degree murder, including the deaths of Ronald Santiago, Andrea Brown, and Robert Sewell. He received seven death sentences for his crimes. Despite numerous appeals, his convictions and sentences were upheld. Paul Dennis Reid Jr. died in a Nashville hospital on November 1, 2013, from health complications.
