300-plus weapons used, nine killed in Texas biker battle

The bikers involved in the biggest and bloodiest clash of motorcycle gangs in recent decades brought an astonishing arsenal to the Twin Peaks restaurant in south Waco last Sunday, police said. Investigators have recovered more than 300 weapons in and around the restaurant, Sgt Patrick Swanton of the Waco Police Department said.

"This shows the level of violence that they thought was going to go on here," Swanton told the Houston Chronicle in a video interview. He cited pocket knives, larger military-style knives, brass knuckles, clubs, chains with padlocks on them and, of course, guns, including an AK47 assault rifle in a vehicle in the parking lot. Swanton said the bikers discarded or tried to hide the weapons – some were found in sacks of tortilla chips, others were stuffed into cushions or placed in kitchen stoves or between bags of flour – apparently so as not to be armed when they were arrested. Someone tried to flush a handgun down a toilet.

“This isn’t your churchgoing crowd that came out to have a dinner with the family,” he said. “This is a gang-oriented criminal element that was in our city to conduct criminal activity.”

Swanton said later that an initial figure of more than 1,000 recovered weapons was “overestimated” and thatthe number was revised to “318 and counting, with the crime scene still being processed”. The weapons included 118 handguns, 157 knives and the AK47.

But as the authorities released names of people involved in the melee, which left nine dead and 18 injured, a picture of the group began to emerge, including many men who fit the stereotyped image of bearded, tattooed, intimidating bikers but also including a number of minorities and women, a former police detective, and people who may not have belonged to any gang.

One of the nine killed was Jesus D Rodriguez (65), whose son, Vincent Ramirez, said his father was an ex-marine and a retired factory worker – and not armed and not a gang member. “He pretty much was an independent biker,” Ramirez said. “He just loved riding with anybody. He didn’t want to be classified in one group.”

Mixed profiles

The authorities released brief descriptions of all 177 people they arrested, as well as the names of nine people killed in the gunbattle. Together, they made for the first snapshot of the people involved. Among those arrested was Juan Garcia (45), an engineer for the Austin public works department. Two defendants, Walter and

Ester Weaver

, are a middle-aged couple from Killeen, an hour’s drive away. One of the oldest is Lawrence Yager (65), who lives in Buda, a town outside Austin. One of the youngest is Daniel Pesina (21), of

San Antonio

.

The mugshot of Wesley McAlister (32), a 270-pound (122kg) biker, shows a man with a scraggly goatee, a short Mohawk, and a large tattoo wrapped around his throat reading “Chaos”. Most of those arrested are white men, but about 40 are Hispanic, two are black, four are women, and one of those women, Ester Weaver (46) is Native American. One of the black men, Martin Lewis (62), whose photos show him with a gray beard apparently dyed black on just one side, is a retired detective who spent 32 years with the San Antonio police department.

A handful of those arrested appear to be father and son, or husband and wife. Ronald Warren (55) – of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, the only one of the 177 arrested not from Texas – posed for his mug shot still wearing bandages on his neck and jawline from wounds in the melee.

Bikers gathered at the restaurant for a meeting of a regional council that discusses matters of concern to motorcyclists. Law enforcement officials say that continuing disputes between two groups – the largest motorcycle gang in Texas, the Bandidos, who were among the organisers, and a smaller rival group, the Cossacks – helped fuel the tension.

The Cossacks and an affiliated group, the Scimitars, were not invited to the meeting, but dozens of their members showed up, according to law enforcement officials and bikers.

In all, members of five clubs were present. Anticipating a possible clash, the police were outside the restaurant before the violence began. Fighting commenced, possibly over a parking dispute or one person running over another’s foot, and quickly turned to gunfire, with violence spreading inside the restaurant and in the parking lot, the authorities said. Officials said when the police tried to intervene, bikers fired at them, and they returned fire.

In a statement, the operators of the Waco restaurant, whose franchise agreement with Twin Peaks was revoked, disputed statements by the police that the violence started inside. “Based on restaurant security camera video footage, what happened inside the restaurant was that people sought safety inside, where they assisted each other and came to the aid of patrons, staff and management,” read the statement from the restaurant, which has turned over the video to the authorities.

Police role

The police, who have spent days combing through the large, complex crime scene, have not said how many rounds were fired, or who shot whom, but they acknowledged that some of the dead and wounded may have been shot by officers. Eighteen people were treated at local hospitals for injuries.

Ramirez, Rodriguez's son, said he suspected the police of escalating violence. "If you notice, there were no officers who got injured or shot or anything. No one from law enforcement has come over here and informed my mom of what happened," he said, adding the authorities initially told them his father "was still in a holding cell". – (New York Times service)