OFF THE WIRE
Reno --
Chatting peacefully on the floor of a Nevada casino, a Hells Angels leader and a 27-year veteran of the rival Vagos motorcycle gang thought they had negotiated a truce between competing members who had been itching for a fight at a weekend biker festival.
"Everything is going to be all right," the Vagos member recalls his rival telling him. "He said, 'I'm getting too old for this.' And I said, 'I'm getting too old for this too.' "
An hour later, a brawl and shootout erupted, killing one of the highest-ranking Hells Angels in the country and wounding two Vagos members.
More violence has followed the melee at the hotel-casino in Sparks on Sept. 23, but the longtime Vagos member told a grand jury in Reno this month that the deadly gunbattle was not part of an assassination plot or a formal declaration of war.
Rather, he testified under condition of confidentiality, it was the result of the unauthorized behavior of a drunken fellow Vagos - a loose cannon nicknamed "Jabbers," who provoked the fight that led to the fatal shooting.
"Jabbers has a big mouth. He's always had a big mouth," said the witness, who described himself as in the "higher echelon" of Vagos leadership.
3 indicted in killing
Jabbers, whose real name is Gary Stuart Rudnick, was vice president of the Vagos Los Angeles chapter but since has been kicked out of the club, according to the confidential witness. Rudnick is one of three men indicted on murder charges in the killing of Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew, the president of the Hells Angels San Jose chapter.
Rudnick had refused to back down even after national Vagos officers were summoned and talks with Hells Angels' leaders had calmed the volatile situation shortly after 10 p.m. on Sept. 23, the grand jury witness said.
"This was defused by national," he said. "The national (leaders) went down there and talked to them. Everything was worked out, there was no problems."
But about an hour later, Rudnick again was taunting Pettigrew, who the witness said "in the Hells Angels world is one of the most important guys in the United States." Finally, he said Pettigrew had enough and punched Rudnick in the face, touching off a series of fights that led to the gunfire.
"All hell broke loose," the witness testified.
Another Vagos, Ernesto Gonzalez, is accused of shooting Pettigrew four times in the back and is being held without bail on an open murder charge. Rudnick and Cesar Villagrana, a Hells Angel member accused of shooting two Vagos that night, face second-degree murder charges for their role.
'A premeditated thing'
The 278-page transcript entered into the court record this week offers a look at the mayhem in the jam-packed Nugget hotel-casino shortly before midnight on Sept. 23 - much of it captured on the casino's 448 security cameras. Investigators later retrieved dozens of shell casings and bullets.
"It was a madhouse on that casino floor," said Sparks police Officer Jean Marie Walsh, a 22-year veteran of the force.
In addition to a total of five gunshot wounds, Pettigrew suffered multiple stab wounds in the face, said Dr. Ellen Clark, the Washoe County medical examiner who performed the autopsy. She said his nose had been sliced and one nostril was "almost completely detached from the nose."
The Vagos witness also described an element of the surveillance tapes to the grand jurors.
"There's Jabbers putting on his gloves. The reason he is putting on his gloves is for one reason only, it is a premeditated thing they are going to start some action. This thing is going to go off."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/24/MNKT1M40KH.DTL#ixzz1ekx1IE6z
