Please be aware. Things like this are a hotbead for more trouble. Johnny Ringos may be better bar to visit while in town. Helldorado Days are in a couple of weeks so please be careful.

This was last weekend.

The Wild Wild West got a little wilder last weekend in Tombstone when a motorcycle group known as the Legacy Riders rolled into town.
Friday night there a few problems with the locals, we're told, though Saturday night is when the real fireworks took off.
It's unclear who started it--and legally speaking, it doesn't really matter. But rather than assault charges, we very easily could be talking about murder--based on what happened at the Crystal Palace Saloon Saturday night.
Says Crystal Palace owner Kim Herrig, "I was surprised because we have biker groups come to town all the time and never have problems."
But that all changed Saturday, just a little before midnight. Take a look at the young man in the white shirt. He's a Tombstone local.
Something is said and that young man is punched in the face and immediately surrounded by bikers. What happened next is still a blur to bar manager Celeste Cain.
"I didn't see who they had or what...all I saw was nothing but bikers. I didn't see anybody else."
That is until Cain got up on the bar and watched what was happening outside. A mob of bikers--surrounding and beating two locals--one of them slipping in and out of consciousness.
Says Cain, "He was obviously knocked out. He couldn't move. His head was up against the door and they were just pounding his lifeless body."
"There were a couple of people who were unconscious and unresponsive at the time the two deputies arrived."
That's M.J. Smith, the Tombstone Marshal. He says two of the bikers have been identified and face charges of aggravated assault and simple assault. But there's obviously many more people involved.
Across the street, at Big Nose Kate's, we see bikers going into the bathroom and changing their clothes...so they won't be identified. Outside, Deputy Marshal J.D. Dematteo is confronting Legacy Riders left and right.
Almost all of them had guns, Dematteo said, one even offered to show it to him.
"I said, 'No--if you go for your gun it's gonna be either you or I that's gonna die tonight--and it's not gonna be me.'"
In the end, four people were hospitalized--though each was released by the following day. As for the Legacy Riders--they're a veterans-based group from around the United States. We're told they've had some run-ins in other parts of Arizona.
Based on what happened Saturday, they're no longer welcome at the Crystal Palace Saloon either.
"It gives vets a bad name. These guys, they're heroes to me," says Celeste Cain, shaking her head. "They're people we look up to and they turn around and nobody in their own group is pulling each other off--it's just terrible. Something like this should never happen."
Local here in Tombstone would like to put this problem behind them as quickly as possible. Their Helldorado Days weekend--which brings in 25 thousand people here every year--is less than two weeks away.

 

Damn, Twiggy, you be careful down there.

Bring your gun, and don't talk to strangers.

 

If anyone gets strange, they'll have to talk to the gun!!

 

it's worse in Sierra Vista

 

All pretty much the same neck of the woods, no??

 

yeah pretty much. i usually don't go to bars alone except for at the VFW.