A young fan obsessed with heavy metal shot and killed former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three other people during a show by Damageplan, Abbott's latest band. The tragedy took place on the evening of December 8th at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio.

The shooter, Nathan Gale, 25, was killed by a Columbus police officer minutes after the violence erupted. A stocky former Marine, Gale was reportedly upset that Pantera had broken up — last year — and may have blamed Abbott for the band's acrimonious split. The deaths came on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the murder of John Lennon.

The other victims were twenty-three-year-old fan Nathan Bray, Damageplan crew member Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson, 40, and club employee Erin A. Halk, 29.

Abbott, 38, was known as an expressive guitarist who brought the fluid dynamics of Eddie Van Halen's technique to Pantera's much harder power-groove thrash. One of the Nineties' most uncompromising metal acts, Pantera were also one of the most successful: During its eighteen-year career, the band sold more than 7 million records, according to SoundScan; 1994's Far Beyond Driven entered the charts at Number One and sold 1.4 million copies.

Four bands were on the bill at the Alrosa Villa, and about 250 people, paying around eight dollars per ticket, had shown up, well short of the venue's capacity of 600. Members of a local group, Volume Dealer, one of the opening acts, dressed in combat fatigues. Another local opener was named 12 Gauge.

In the chilly darkness, Gale had been hanging out in the club's parking lot while the music pounded inside. A construction worker from Marysville, Ohio, a blue-collar suburb twenty-five miles northwest of Columbus, Gale stood six feet three and weighed more than 250 pounds. He wore thick glasses and a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey jersey over a hooded sweat shirt.

"Hey, man, why aren't you watching the show?" a fan asked him.

"I don't want to see no shitty local bands," he said.

"You can at least go inside and stay warm."

"No, man," Gale said. "I'm gonna wait for Damageplan."

Club manager Rick Cautela pegged Gale as a harmless hanger-on — one without a ticket. "He was just a crazy fan trying to talk to members of the band," Cautela said. "One of my guys who helps to set up the bands eventually told him to leave."

Instead, as Damageplan took the stage, Gale jumped a six-foot-high fence and rushed into the club through a side door. Walking swiftly past pool tables, a bar and the sound booth, he reached the left side of the stage. Witnesses thought Gale, whose head was shaved, wanted to stage-dive. It was about ninety seconds into the first song of the set, Damageplan's new single, "New Found Power."

"The dude was way determined," said Billy Payne, the singer for Volume Dealer, who saw Gale enter the club. "He was on a mission. He looked angry. He was walking like he was going into battle."