On Sunday, a dispute about a parking lot escalated into a dispute in a parking lot at the Waco Twin Peaks Bar And Grill. When all was said and done, the “true biker shootout [2]” left 9 bikers dead, 18 bikers stabbed and/or shot, and 170 bikers arrested.
Sorting out precisely what went wrong when a “loose confederation” of biker gangs gathered at the Texas “breastaurant” to discuss matters of mutual interest has so far been challenging [3], but authorities believe they may have gotten to the bottom of the matter.
Apparently, the event got off to a rather inauspicious start when the Cossacks showed up uninvited. After that, one biker accidentally rolled over another biker’s shoe, at which point the battle was officially joined, proving once again that it doesn’t take much to turn a biker gang annual meeting into a shootout.
ABC has more [4]:
A deadly weekend shootout involving rival motorcycle gangs apparently began with a parking dispute and someone running over a gang member's foot, police said Tuesday.
Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said an uninvited group appeared for Sunday's meeting of a loose confederation of biker gangs at a restaurant.
One man was injured when a vehicle rolled over his foot. That caused a dispute that continued inside the restaurant, where fighting and then shooting began, before the melee spilled back outside, Swanton said.
Authorities offered few details. It was not clear which gang was responsible for running over the biker's foot or which gang the aggrieved biker belonged to...
Preliminary autopsy results showed all nine of the dead were killed by gunshots. Many were hit in the head, neck, chest or torso. Most of the men were in their 40s, but they ranged in age from 27 to 65, according to reports released by a McLennan County justice of the peace.
Police have acknowledged firing on armed bikers, but it was unclear how many of the dead were shot by gang members and how many were shot by officers.
One thing about biker gang meetings is that coming unarmed could be the last mistake you’ll ever make. Additionally, there's no way to know, going in, how far things might escalate, so it's best to prepare for everything, with hand-to-hand combat being the base case but acknowledging, if only to yourself, that there are a variety of bear case scenarios, including, but certainly not limited to: a bat fight, knive-throwing, a motorcycle chain battle, or ultimately, a true biker shootout.
Given the above, we weren't surprised to learn that the number of weapons found hidden at Twin Peaks exceeded the number of bikers present.
Via The Waco Police Dept. Facebook page:
Weapons Count Update
I have asked the Crime Scene Supervisor to give me a more firm count of weapons discovered from the Twin Peaks Restaurant so far. The first number I gave this morning was a best guess estimate from looking at the overall crime scene and was over estimated. My apologies for the confusion and I should have waited to release a more specific count not estimate.
The crime scene officers specifically stopped at my request to count weapons and have now been able to determine that count and it is 318 and still counting. We do expect the numbers to continue to rise. Please understand this is an extremely complex crime scene and they specifically took the time out to be able to give me a more accurate account late this afternoon. Those weapons include clubs, knifes, brass knuckles, firearms, and chains with padlocks attached to them intended and used as weapons.
The earlier estimate was an attempt to give me a count and it was initially believed the number was higher than we now know. We stand corrected at 318 and counting, with the crime scene still being processed. The weapons appear to have been discarded as Officers arrived and some hastily hidden. The have been found in sacks of chips, stuffed between bags of flour, stuffed into the bench seating, hidden in shelves, thrown into trash cans, placed in the kitchen stoves, discarded on floors and even so far as to attempt to flush a handgun down a commode. An Ak-47 was found in a vehicle parked in the parking lot as well as body armor.
Weapon breakdown so far is this:
118 Handguns
1 Ak-47
157 Knives
43 others
With that, we can offer the following speculative reconstruction of the incident:
The Cossacks didn’t get an invite to the Twin Peaks meeting but decided to crash the party. When they arrived in the parking lot, tempers flared and in the heat of the moment, someone inadvertently ran over someone else’s foot. At that point, all present simultaneously realized that hostilities were imminent, prompting a mad rush for everything from automatic weapons to chains with padlocks.
The rest, as they say, is biker gang history.
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