James Niggemeyer, the officer who ended the 2004 Alrosa Villa shooting, says he has no regrets despite the cost.
James Niggemeyer was 27 years old and eight minutes into his shift when the call came. Twenty-two years on, the former Columbus police officer who ended the shooting at the Alrosa Villa has spoken at length about that night, what he did, and what it took from him afterwards.
Speaking to Bill Bailey on “Today’s Boondoggle Podcast“, Niggemeyer said he does not regret any of it, despite panic attacks, hospitalisation and a medical retirement that ended the career he had built.
He was the first officer to reach the club because of where his district sat and how he worked his shift.
“When that call went out as a active shooter at the Alrosa Villa [nightclub in Columbus], I had happened to already have left the substation. That call went out about a little before 10:15 p.m. I worked 10 [p.m.] to 6 [a.m.], so we always have roll call at 10:00 o’clock, and then we go out to pack up our cruisers and head out. Well, my district in that precinct was the farthest from the substation, so I usually tried to get going early ’cause I had the longest drive. So I was the first one out of the substation that day, when that call went out. But I carried a Remington 870 shotgun across my cruiser here. I was one of only two cruisers that carried it because my district was more rural, so we had deer-versus-car accidents — you had to put deer down and things — where the districts that were more in the city didn’t need them. Well, the Remington 870 was the same shotgun that I hunted with since I was 12 years old. I knew that gun inside and out. So a lot of people ask me, ‘Why’d you use a shotgun instead of your pistol?’ Well, one, I’m more familiar with the shotgun, and two, I’m better shot with the shotgun. So that’s a question I get asked a lot,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He arrived alone. Other officers were entering at the front; fans outside directed him to the back door.
James continued: “When I got [to Alrosa Villa] and was the only officer there, there were fans telling me where to go. I’d never been in the Alrosa in my life, so I wasn’t familiar with the layout. But when I entered the back door, where they had told me to go, and I saw the hostage in there, or the suspect in there holding a hostage. We didn’t know he was holding a hostage. That had not come out on the radio. And he still had the gun and was waving it around and things like that. So I went ahead and snuck in at that point. But between hunting my whole life and military and police training, it was just a culmination of everything I had been through in my life. And you hear the words ‘tunnel vision’, but it was true — I had true tunnel vision. Literally, everything was black except for the suspect and the hostage. It was a true tunnel vision. I literally didn’t hear or see anything else. I can’t even tell you what people were screaming. So, I think it was just everything together. Training — in the police department, we had just done active shooter training a couple of months prior. Of course, the active shooter training we had did, we had did it with groups of four, not on our own. But I don’t know if the situation would’ve been different had he not been holding a hostage. But because he was holding a hostage and he had the hostage in a headlock, I just felt like I couldn’t sit and wait on backup. So, yeah, it was just a lifetime culmination. And I knew that weapon really well and what it was capable of doing.”
He described the same moment to MTV in 2005: “I was still hoping maybe he’d let the hostage go and retreat. I was just trying to get as close as I could to assess the situation and hoping he’d [release] the hostage so I wouldn’t have to shoot. But then, while he was waving the gun around, he took it and stuck it to the hostage’s head … which changed the whole situation, if he was going to possibly execute the hostage. They never mentioned a hostage on the radio calls. I knew at that point he wasn’t going to let this guy go, and [might] do something to him.”
The man being held was John “Kat” Brooks, Damageplan‘s drum technician. He had already been shot three times trying to take the gun away, was overpowered, and was being held in a headlock when James came through the door. He survived.
James fired one shot from around twenty feet. The gunman still had 35 rounds of ammunition on him.
James stayed on patrol for three years afterwards. Doctors and the city eventually agreed he should not be a first responder, and he was moved to the robbery squad as a detective before being medically retired.
“Well, I tell you what, what I like to tell a lot of people, I’d seen some things in the military. I had, unfortunately, seen, when we were at NTC training for the Middle East, I had seen a tank run over a Humvee and unfortunately crush the driver. But I wasn’t directly involved. It was from a distance,” he recalled. “In the police department, I had gone on many a scenes where either somebody was shot or killed or suicide or car wreck, things of those nature, I’d seen all this, but never directly involved. This was the first time that — ending a person’s life, you don’t know how it’s gonna affect you. Everybody can tell you whatever they wanna tell you, but there’s very select few people that have ever been involved in something like that, whether they were in combat or police. But I was hospitalized for panic attacks. That was the thing that got me the most, was the panic attacks, and then the constant nightmares. It really took me a long time that my brain just wouldn’t shut down. And doctors and everybody tried a lot of different things to try to get it… I’d just be here on a normal day, like talking to you, and I’d just go into a full-blown panic attack, and I couldn’t breathe. So, it affected me mentally, but that also affected me physically, to the point where the department retired me medically because of it. So, yeah, it ended my career, something that I did, everybody tells me extremely well, ended up ending my career. But I don’t regret it for a minute. I’m glad I was able to stop him before a lot more people were hurt. But it certainly didn’t… It kind of set my life on a spiral. But that’s part of the job. You sign up for it. You just have to deal with it, I guess.”
He also said he had no idea whose show it was: “Well, it wasn’t till after [that I found out], because, like I said, we had just left roll calls and I had never been [at the Alrosa Villa]. I didn’t know who was playing. I mean, we have several different venues around Columbus, so there’s always somebody playing in some venue. So at the time, I had no clue who was playing in that venue. Of course I had heard of Pantera. I get asked quite a bit if I was a fan. I grew up in the country. I was more of a country music fan, more what my family listened to — my dad, my grandparents — and more classic rock, I call it, which would be your AC/DCs and Scorpions and Foreigners and then more music in the ’80s and ’90s-type rock. So I was never a metal fan, but I had heard of Pantera, Metallica, things of that nature. But when it was all over with, an officer took my gun from me for evidence, and then I was escorted into a cruiser and then I was actually driven away from the scene. So I probably wasn’t on the scene for more than two minutes after it was over with. And it wasn’t until probably, I’d say maybe a half hour after the incident to when I found out who was shot that night. It was just through radio chatter that I had heard it. And then, of course we all had cell phones and things, and it was breaking news worldwide. So, yeah, no clue until maybe a half hour after.”
Damageplan were into the opening song at the Alrosa Villa on Sinclair Road on 8 December 2004 when a 25-year-old former Marine climbed onto the stage with a 9mm handgun and began firing. Around 200 people were in the room.
Four men died. Darrell “Dimebag” Abbott was 38. Jeffrey “Mayhem” Thompson, 40, Damageplan‘s head of security, was killed pulling the gunman to the ground — friends said he had a habit of telling people he would take a bullet for them. Erin “Stoney” Halk, 29, an Alrosa Villa employee and himself a former Marine, went at the gunman as he reloaded. Nathan Bray, 23, had come to watch the show, climbed onto the stage to give CPR to Dimebag and Thompson, and was killed doing it. He left a wife and a young son.
Tour manager Chris Paluska, Brooks and Travis Burnett were wounded. The whole thing lasted around three minutes.
James has said he received a great deal of support from Pantera fans in the years since, and something he did not expect, a letter from the gunman’s mother.
“She wrote me a few weeks after and told me she understood that I was just doing my job,” he said. “And she didn’t have any ill will toward me.”
The Alrosa Villa never recovered its footing. The club was sold in 2019 and demolished in 2021, with housing built on the site. A painted memorial rock stood outside it for years.
