OFF THE WIRE
For the past 18 years the city of Sparks in Washoe County, Nevada, has been part of an annual weekend-long festival known as Street Vibrations, which also includes Reno and Virginia City.
This year up to 30,000 motorbike enthusiasts were expected to attend the celebrations, but the plug was pulled on the event mid-flow after a shootout between the Hells Angels and Vagos gxxgs inside John Ascuaga’s Nugget Casino on Friday night.
During the fight, the president of the San Jose chapter of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club, Jeffrey “Jethro” Pettigrew, was fatally wounded, while two Vagos gxxg members were also shot, but are expected to recover.
Since the incident, police have now started reviewing cctv video to get a clearer picture as to what transpired inside the casino. So far, it would appear that around a dozen Hells Angels and 60 Vagos members were gambling inside the 1,600-room hotel and casino at the time.
It is also believed the fight may have been a spontaneous act, with one eye-witness claiming the gun fight occurred after a fistfight broke out between Hells Angels and Vagos members near the slot machines by Trader Dick’s bar.
“He [Hells Angels member] was down with the bloody nose, gets up and pulls out the gun and that’s the first shot…Then he turn the gun towards the south of the building and that’s when he started firing into the crowd,” said Jose Franco of Reno.
Hells Angel member Cesar Villagrana, 36, has now been arrested by police although they say there is no immediate evidence he actually wounded anyone with his shots.
The gunfight which ensued left Jeffrey “Jethro” Pettigrew dead, two Vagos members wounded, with a drive-by shooting incident 12 hours later leaving Vagos member Shane Smith, 40, too, in hospital.
Longstandin g tensions are known to exist between the Hells Angels and the Vagos with the two gxxgs having had several run-ins in the past. Following the latest incident, Sparks police said:
“The Sparks Police Department wants to acknowledge the acts of these two motorcycle clubs do not represent a majority of the motorcycle enthusiasts that come to the Street Vibrations event.”
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