Senseless

I heard this story on the radio while I was at work this morning, and couldn't believe my ears. I've come to expect and accept the most bizarre behavior and unexplainable events, but this really hit me from out of nowhere. And, it makes absolutley no sense at all! I just don't get what goes throught the minds of some people in this world. Thanks to the actions of this mental defective, the world is missing three people who should still be here, and the simple act of concert-going is most likely about to change for a long time. Dimebag Darrell was a great guitar player who came to Ohio to put on a show, and now he dead because some guy didn't like that Pantera split up! I don't what to think, except to say I wish these kind of people would quick ruining the world for others, because they don't like it. Don't start killing others who want to live because you want to die. Put a gun in your mouth and leave the rest of us alone!



Dimebag Darrell, Four Others Killed In Ohio Concert Shooting

12.09.2004



Man jumps onstage and shoots bandmembers, others.



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, and two fans, Nathan Bray, 23, and Erin Halk, 29, according to Columbus Police Department public information officer Sherry Mercurio. Gale also wounded two 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. One eyewitness told CNN that Gale reloaded his gun during the shooting spree. The Columbus Dispatch described the gunman as a tall, bald, heavyset man in a Columbus Blue Jackets jersey and jeans.



The fifth victim's name and those of the two wounded have not yet been released, but the club's manager told the Dispatch that one of the wounded 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?"



Damageplan also features Dimebag's brother, former Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul; singer Patrick Lachman and bassist Bob Zilla.