The mother of the gunman who shot dead four people at a Damageplan gig in Ohio - including the band's lead singer 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott – has admitted to Columbus TV station NBC 4 that she gave her son the gun he used during the shooting. Mary Clark, mother of gunman Nathan Gale, told the TV network: "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."
Apologising to the families of those who died in the shooting, Clark explained that her son suffered from paranoid schizophrenia (she gave him the gun before that was diagnosed), a condition that led to his medical discharge from the US marines for whom he served for just under two years. She continued: "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 long term issues with Abbott's former band Pantera - at one time claiming he had written their songs and that they had stolen them off him. However Clark said she felt her son had overcome many of his issues before the shooting: "It seemed like he. he put it out of his mind. It seemed like, OK, everything was better."
Clark concluded by commending Columbus police officer James Niggemeyer who, on arriving on the scene of the shooting, shot her son dead to stop him shooting others in the audience.