The mother of the gunman who murdered four people at the DAMAGEPLAN gig in OHIO last week has revealed that she bought him the weapon.
Mary Clark, mother of Nathan Gale – who was eventually shot and killed by police – made the admission to Columbus TV station NBC 4.
She said: “When he came home for Christmas the year he was in service, I was proud of that man for cleaning up his life the way he did. And I bought him that gun. I’ll never, never be able to live that part down.”
Gale, a former Marine, opened fire in the town’s Alrosa Villa Club last Wednesday (December 8), killing Damageplan guitarist ‘Dimebag’ Darrell Abbott alongside fan Nathan Bray, club employee Erin Halk and bodyguard Jeff Thompson.
Clark repeatedly apologised to the victims and their families as she revealed that Gale suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. She said that she bought the gun before his diagnosis – which would lead to his medical discharge from the US Marines after serving less than half of his four years.
She said: “And I still don’t understand the whole thing, but he came home with his medications, and I don’t know if he took them or not. I don’t know if he was afraid to, or… ashamed to, or… didn’t believe it himself. I have such remorse for those families, and I am so sorry that they are losing their loved ones. Their sons, brothers, fathers.”
Gale had been a fan of Pantera – Darrell Abbott’s former band – and it has emerged that as a teenager he had attempted to pass the band’s lyrics off as his own, talking of his intention to sue the band for trying to steal his identity. “He had it in his head that those were his lyrics. And nobody was going to change his mind.”
However, Clark also told of how she had put the behaviour down to some ‘drug issues’ and eventually thought she had succeeded in convincing her son she was mistaken. “It seemed like he… he put it out of his mind. It seemed like, OK, everything was better.”
Clark also commended Columbus police officer James Niggemeyer for shooting her son to save the lives of others.