Police: Suspects fired most shots
‘We did not fifire indiscriminately into the crowd,’ Waco police chief says of response to biker melee.
Law officers involved in a deadly shooting outside a biker gathering in Waco had disabled the automatic setting on their rifles, and most of the dozens of shell casings found at the scene were from suspects’ guns, police said Friday.
Three of the 16 officers outside the Twin Peaks restaurant fired their weapons after gun- fire erupted following a dispute bet ween two rival biker gangs on May 17, Waco Police Chief Brent Stroman said. The chief said the officers, who were staged outside in anticipation of a large biker meeting, fired 12 times only after being shot at during the melee that left nine people dead and 18 injured.
“We did not fire indiscriminately into the crowd. Our of-
ficers were restrained,” Stroman said during a news conference Friday in Waco.
Witnesses have said they thought they heard automatic weapons during the shooting. Investigators haven’t said who fifired the fatal shots.
The shooting began after an apparent confrontation between the Bandidos, the predominant motorcycle club in Texas, and the Cossacks, according to investigators. About 175 bikers were arrested following the shooting, and hundreds of weapons — including 151 firearms — were been recovered.
Stroman said the three offifficers who fifired their weapons shot a total of 12 bullets, though 44 shell casings have been found so far at the scene. Police spokesman Steve Anderson said 32 of those recovered shell casings came from suspects’ weapons, and that doesn’t include casings from suspects’ revolvers, from which casings must be manually ejected.
“As we get into examining all of the weapons, we may fifind even more empty shell casings, to show there were more than 32 rounds fifired by suspects,” Anderson said Friday.
Other weapons recovered include knives, brass knuckles, tomahawks, bats, a machete and a chain. Some weapons were stashed between bags of flour in the restaurant’s kitchen, while others were recovered with metal de- tectors, found buried under grass, police said.
During his news conference Friday, Stroman defended investigators’ decision to arrest the roughly 175 bikers after the shooting, and charge each with engaging in organized crime.
“Those people who went to jail that night, there was probable cause for that arrest ,” Stroman said.
A city of Austin employee was among those charged in connection with the shooting. Juan Carlos Garcia, 45, is an engineer with the Public Works Department.
Garcia and two other men from the Austin area — Drew King, 31, and James Harris, 27 — were released from jail for a second time after authorities agreed to reduce their bail, according to public records. They were released May 29 after their bail was reduced from $1 million, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald.
The three men initially were arrested in McLennan County the day of the shooting, charged with state jail felonies and a Class A misdemeanor, and given bail of $20,000 to $ 50,000. They were released from jail the day after the shooting, according to public records, but turned themselves in to the Travis County Jail the next day when authorities issued new warrants for their arrest. The new warrants included fifirst- degree felony charges.
The Tribune-Herald reported that McLennan County judges in May approved $25,000 bonds for the three Austin-area men, on the condition that the men stay out of the county until their court dates, wear ankle monitors, abide by curfews and avoid associating with biker groups.