PANTERA has issued a statement calling out the concert industry for not doing more to prevent future tragedies in the wake of the tragic shooting death of Christina Grimmie. On Friday (June 10), Grimmie, a former contestant on NBC's "The Voice", was shot and killed following her performance in Orlando, Florida. The suspect, identified as 27-year-old Kevin Loibl of St. Petersburg, Florida, didn't appear to know Christina personally and is believed to have traveled to Orlando specifically to attack her and then fatally shot himself. The manner in which Grimmie was murdered struck a chord with PANTERA, whose guitarist, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, was killed onstage more than a decade ago. Earlier today (Sunday, June 12), PANTERA released the following statement via the band's official Facebook page: "We are so sad and disappointed to hear that Christina Grimmie was gunned down the same way that Dimebag Darrell was. After Dime's murder, we all prayed that our industry (i.e. club owners & promoters) would do whatever they needed to do to protect artists from gun wielding fanatics. Sadly, that's not the case and another rising star had to pay the consequences with her life. SOMETHING NEEDS TO CHANGE! RIP Christina & RIP Dime, Jeff Thompson, Erin Halk, and Nathan Bray." Dimebag was co-founder and lead guitarist for PANTERA. When PANTERA broke up in 2003, Dimebag and his brother Vinnie Paul formed DAMAGEPLAN. On December 8, 2004, while performing with DAMAGEPLAN at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, Dimebag was shot and killed onstage by Nathan Gale. He was 38 years old. Gale, an auto mechanic and ex-Marine, was described by some as an unstable man who once asserted that PANTERA had stolen his song lyrics and even his identity. Vinnie Paul sued Alrosa Villa over his brother's death. The lawsuit was settled out of court in 2007 for what was described at the time as a nominal amount. Fighting the lawsuit cost "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," Rick Cautela, the club's owner, told The Columbus Dispatch. "We went from doing damn good to being broke — and came back." In a 2014 interview with the "Talk Is Jericho" podcast, Vinnie spoke about his brother's passing. He said: "It was a really hardcore, tragic event, and the guy [Nathan Gale] wanted to kill me too. And somehow or another, I was lucky enough to escape that, and I'm still here, and I will do everything and anything I can to carry on the legacy and the tradition that my brother always had." Even though it's been a decade since his brother's murder, Vinnie still gets flashbacks of the day's events "every night." He says: "I don't wanna remember it, I don't wanna think about it, I don't want anybody saying, 'Hey, man…' You know… "It's hard. It's hard. But I've found peace."
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