Witness: When Bandidos stormed the bar, ‘the shooting started’

What started as an ordinary and quiet night at the Gator’s Jam Inn changed the minute members of the Bandidos motorcycle club stormed the bar, a witness testified Tuesday.
“Then the shooting started,” said Ellen Dockery, a bartender at Gator’s.

She was looking in the mirror facing the cash register when more than 20 people — identified as Bandidos by the color of their patches — started pouring in from the front and rear doors.
“Scotty (the head bartender) started screaming at me to get down,” Dockery said. “And then he called 911.”

Other 911 callers shared similar desperate pleas.
One man told the 911 call talker that they needed to send ambulances — quickly.
“There’s been 15 shots so far and they’re still shooting,” according to another 911 call. Dockery was among those who testified Tuesday during the trial of Howard Wayne Baker, the 62-year-old president of the Fort Worth chapter of the Bandidos, a notorious motorcycle club. Prosecutors contend that Baker gave the orders to shoot Geoffrey Brady, 41, a man suspected of being a member of a rival gang, on Dec. 12, 2014, during an ambush at Gator’s, a Riverside area bar that has since closed.

Baker is accused of engaging in organized crime and directing the activities of a street gang. Baker, who is also suspected of shooting Brady, was booked into jail on Dec. 14 and released that same day after posting a $100,000 bond, according to court records.

Brady, who was believed to be a member of the Ghost Riders motorcycle gang, died from multiple gunshot wounds. Prosecutors told the jury that two other motorcycle gang members were shot, threatened and beaten during the ambush. Testimony continued Tuesday afternoon in the trial that casts a dark shadow over the Bandidos.

The motorcycle club — or MC — is described in testimony as an gang of outlaws that operates internationally, with more than 3,600 members in 210 chapters in 22 countries, according to Doug Pearson, a motorcycle gang expert with the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms based on Aurora, Colo.

Most recently, members of the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle gangs were involved in the May 2015 shootout at a Waco restaurant that left nine people dead. Pearson testified that the gang was formed in 1966 by Don Chambers, a former military man an his friends and patterned after the Hell’s Angels.


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