Enraged Pantera fan, Nathan Gale, laying dead from a headshot wound by a police officer, after killing 4 people and injuring 3 others.
On the 8th of December, 2004, Alrosa Villa, a nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, held a concert headlined by “Damageplan”, a band formed by Dimebag and his brother Paul after they had left their extremely successful heavy-metal band, Pantera, that they founded in 1981. Around 250 people attended the show at the 600-capacity venue.
As the opening acts played their sets, an angry Nathan Gale paced outside the club. When asked by an attendee why he would not come into the club, Gale said he did not want to “see no shitty local bands”, and that he was “gonna wait for Damageplan”. Alrosa Villa’s manager believed him to be a loiterer who did not have a ticket; one of the club’s employees told him to leave. After Damageplan went on stage at around 10:15 p.m. EST, Gale climbed over a six-foot-high (1.8 m) fence and entered the club through a side door.
As Damageplan played the first song of its setlist, “Breathing New Life”, Gale rushed onto the stage and drew his Beretta 92FS, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. He moved directly towards Dimebag and shot him four times at point-blank range: once in the right cheek, the left ear, the back of the head, and the right hand. Some of the attendees initially thought the incident was a part of the act; a security guard recalled: “People were pumping their fists, thinking it was a hoax.”
Damageplan’s tour manager Chris Paluska was shot once in the chest before the band’s head of security, Jeffrey “Mayhem” Thompson, tackled Gale. Thompson was shot in the chest, back and thigh in the ensuing struggle. A fan, Nathan Bray, who climbed onto the stage to attempt to assist Dimebag and Thompson, was shot in the chest, and Erin Halk, an Alrosa Villa employee who approached Gale from behind and tried to disarm him as he was reloading, was shot six times: four times in the chest, and once in the hand and the leg. Damageplan’s drum technician John “Kat” Brooks then attempted to subdue Gale. He was shot twice in the leg and taken as a hostage. Responding within three minutes to a dispatch call, police officer James Niggemeyer entered the club through a door behind the stage and shot Gale once in the head with a 12-gauge Remington Model 870, killing him. At the time of his death, Gale had a half-full magazine in his Beretta and another 30 rounds of ammunition on his person.
Fans performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Dimebag until paramedics arrived at the scene, where he was pronounced dead, aged 38. Thompson, 40, and Halk, 29, also were pronounced dead at the scene, while Bray, 23, was declared dead at the Riverside Methodist Hospital at 11:10 p.m. Paluska and Brooks both were transported to the Riverside Methodist Hospital, where they recovered from their injuries. Travis Burnett, a member of one of the opening acts’ road crew, was grazed in the arm by a bullet and received treatment at the scene, but was not hospitalized.
