Dimebag Darrell, Four Others Killed In Ohio Concert Shooting
Published: December 09, 2004
Dimebag Darrell, guitarist for Damageplan and Pantera, was killed during a shooting spree at a Columbus, Ohio, nightclub
Wednesday night. He was 38.
Darrell, real name Darrell Abbott, was among the five people killed during the incident. Also dead are the gunman,
25-year-old Nathan Gale of nearby Marysville, Ohio; Damageplan bodyguard Jeff Thompson, 40; fan Nathan Bray, 23; and
Erin Halk, 29, who worked at the club. Gale also wounded three people.
Damageplan had just begun their first song in front of approximately 250 people at Alrosa Villa when the gunman jumped
onstage, made a comment about Pantera, and began firing at close range into Darrell's body, shooting him several times
before opening fire on the crowd.
A patrol officer nearby, James Niggemeyer, heard the call of shots fired at 10:18 p.m. and by 10:20 p.m. had snuck
inside the club through a back door, according to public information officer Sergeant Brent Mull. After entering,
Niggemeyer, who had no backup, confronted the gunman onstage, where he observed one victim and Gale holding a hostage
by the neck.
"The officer was able to strategically gun this guy down before he was able to kill his hostage, and it appeared that he
was about to kill his hostage," Mull said at a press conference Thursday (December 9). "The suspect had the hostage in a
headlock situation and had his firearm out shooting, and it's believed he was about to take his gun to the hostage."
But the hostage wriggled out of the way slightly, Mull said, and the officer was able to kill the shooter with a single
shotgun blast as the hostage escaped uninjured. Police said Gale, whose arrest record lists him as 6 feet 3 inches tall
and 225 pounds, used a Beretta 9 mm semiautomatic handgun and reloaded once during the shooting. Gale's prior arrests
were all nonviolent, and included driving with a suspended license and trespassing.
The names of the three wounded victims have not yet been released, but the club's manager told the Dispatch that one of
them was a security guard who had tried to wrestle the attacker's gun away.
"If the officer hadn't acted when he did and how he did, we'd probably be looking at more dead, because this guy was
actively shooting," Mull said. Following the incident, police took more than 200 patrons onto three city-donated buses,
where they were interviewed by some 60 police detectives.
"The ones that were inside and witnessed this ran for their lives and were in fear for their lives," Mull said. "They
are victims too, and we want to take care of them."
In 911 tapes released Thursday, one caller tells the operator, "There's been a shooting! Somebody's shooting! He's
shooting the band, oh sh--, he's still shooting!" Another is heard frantically telling the 911 operator, "We need to
get out, we need to get out! I can't, I can't get out."
One concertgoer, his jeans torn and soaked with blood, told CNN he jumped onstage and attempted to give Darrell CPR
before paramedics arrived.
Police have interviewed friends and relatives of the shooter, attempting to establish a motive for his actions. "We may
never know the motive for this," Mull said, "unless he left a note somewhere else."
One eyewitness, 37-year-old food vendor Medhat Mokhtar, told MTV News that he saw Gale lingering outside the club prior
to Damageplan's set. Gale paced near Mokhtar's food cart and only entered the club when Damageplan's performance began.
Shortly thereafter, Mokhtar noticed concertgoers fleeing the club and screaming, and the vendor headed inside to see
what the disturbance was. He said he then made his way to the stage where a crowd had gathered around the wounded
Darrell. "I tried to push them away, but people loved him too much. The people were kissing his hands and his feet and
trying to give him CPR," Mokhtar said.
Searching Gale's residence is the next step of the investigation, as is analyzing amateur video footage taken of the
incident, which homicide investigators are looking at now, Mull said. The venue had no surveillance footage. Mull also
said he had been told there was no metal detector at the club, though he could not confirm that at press time and a
club spokesperson could not be reached.
As word of Dimebag's death rippled through the metal community, the news was met with shock and sadness
"I'm speechless," former Rob Zombie/ Ozzy Osbourne bassist Rob Blasko Nicholson said. "This is totally unreal. Dimebag
is a f---ing legend and this is total bullsh--."
"This is insane and this is beyond travesty," Killswitch Engage frontman and former Damageplan tour partner Howard
Jones said. "This is beyond anything I've ever heard. This shouldn't happen in or outside of the rock and metal
community. He will be missed and mourned as a person, as a musician, and as a friend."
"Let's for a second forget that I even knew him, [and focus on] just the fact that this was allowed to happen,"
Slipknot singer Corey Taylor said. "If somebody can jump onstage with a gun and shoot one of the most influential
guitarists of my generation, what's next? If this is allowed to happen, what the hell? What does that say? Just that
somebody would think this was a good idea in his own insane world, what does that say about where we're at right now?
It's definitely given me pause. I'm an entertainer as well as a musician, so I have to look at this and think not only
has one of my really good friends died, but what if that had been me?"
For much more on Dimebag Darrell's life, music and influence, tune in to a special edition of "Headbangers Ball"
premiering Saturday night at 10 p.m. ET on MTV2.
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