Killer 'off his rocker'
ANITA CHANG
12dec04
THE man who shot former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three other men to death at a US nightclub was obsessed with the popular heavy metal band and made bizarre accusations against them, a onetime friend said.
Jeramie Brey said gunman Nathan Gale once showed up at a friend's house saying he wanted to share songs he had written. The pages of lyrics were copied from Pantera, but Gale claimed he had written them, Brey said.
"He was off his rocker," Brey told The Columbus Dispatch. "He said they were his songs, that Pantera stole them from him and that he was going to sue them."
He later told Brey he planned to sue Pantera for stealing his identity. Brey and friend Dave Johnson said Gale's behaviour frightened them and they distanced themselves from him several years ago. But other friends said they never considered Gale capable of violence.
On Wednesday night in Columbus, Ohio, the 25-year-old former marine charged the stage at a show by Abbott's new band, Damageplan, and gunned down four people, including Abbott, before a policeman fatally shot him.
Police said yesterday they still didn't know Gale's motive, but some witnesses said Gale yelled accusations that the revered guitarist broke up Pantera.
An imposing figure at 1.9m, Gale had made people uneasy. When he played for the Lima Thunder football team, he psyched himself up before games by piping Pantera into his headphones, coach Mark Green said.
But Green had not pegged Gale as the type to go on a shooting rampage. "It wasn't like he was a loner."
Gale had had minor run-ins with police since 1997 but wasn't considered a troublemaker, according to police in his hometown of Marysville, 40 km northwest of Columbus.
Gale had served with the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina until November last year, when he was discharged after less than half of the typical four-year stint, Marine spokeswoman Gunnery Sergeant Kristine Scarber said. She declined to explain the discharge, citing privacy rules.
A few hours before the shooting, Gale had showed up at Marysville's Bears Den Tattoo Studio, where often he stared at people and forced them into conversations, manager Lucas Bender said.
The violence at the smoke-filled Alrosa Villa club came just after the opening notes by Damageplan, the band formed by Abbott and his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, after they left Pantera.
Gale dodged two band members, grabbed Darrell Abbott and shot him at least five times in the head, witnesses and police said. In less than five minutes, Gale had also killed Erin Halk, 29, a club employee; fan Nathan Bray, 23, of nearby Grove City; and band bodyguard Jeff Thompson, 40.
Two other band employees, Chris Paluska and John Brooks, remained in a hospital this morning with undisclosed injuries.
