WARREN - Pamela and Terrance Dial slowly walked together into Tuesday's liquor license hearing to testify how the Aug. 4 shooting outside Gadd's Olympic Inn, 1129 Parkman Road, irrevocably changed their family's lives.
Pamela Dial was asleep in her bed at 2:19 a.m. when a bullet from a .44 magnum semi-automatic tore through a 6-foot wooden fence, into the wall of her home and hit the top of her head. She had to be steadied by her husband Tuesday as she walked across the room.
The Dials were two of more than a half dozen witnesses testifying in a hearing in Warren City Council caucus chambers to determine if the inn's liquor license should be renewed. The city is objecting to renewal.
Attorney Andrew R. Zellers, representing Linda Gadd, owner of Gadd's Olympic Inn, argued that while this shooting was a tragedy, that incident does not constitute a pattern of problems. The record is good over the 18 years the Gadds operated the bar, he said. Linda Gadd's husband, Richard, died in 2009, and she has run it since until voluntarily closing after the shooting on Aug. 4.
On the morning of Aug. 4, Terrance Dial said his wife woke him, saying, "Help me." When asked what was wrong, she again asked for help, and went to the living room to call 911.
Their son came into the room, saying he heard gunshots. Terrance said he took the phone from his wife to talk to the 911 operator.
"I still didn't know what was going on," he said.
When police arrived, Pamela Dial told them about feeling something hit the top of her head.
On Tuesday, just over five months after the shooting, Pamela Dial still is relearning basic skills most 44-year-olds take for granted. She has had to relearn how to walk, work her arms and hands, feed herself and to talk. The wife and mother of three now must have someone around her 24 hours a day to address her basic needs and to make sure she does not hurt herself.
''Before this happened, my wife worked, drove her car and did things in our yard,'' Terrance Dial said. "She was an independent woman."
She has had numerous surgeries to relieve numerous infections and pressure on her brain. She had to have pieces of her skull removed and a titanium mesh put in place.
Police Detective Michael Currington testified about finding the bullet that struck Pamela lodged in her pillow. Police traced the trajectory of the bullet through the wall.
Antonio Maurice Price, 26, of Arthur Drive N.W., Warren, since has been indicted on charges of felonious assault and discharging a firearm at or into a habitation, both with firearm specifications, in connection with the shooting.
Currington testified Price told him that he was sitting in Olympic Inn when he saw "some east side dudes" enter and knew there would be trouble. He turned over a bottle of beer, which spilled on the floor. There was a fight, and the bar owner chased the men out of the building with pepper spray, he told Currington.
"He said there was gunshots outside, so he went behind his car, where he retrieved a gun and fired two shots towards the 1175 Parkman Road and one shot towards the concrete company," Currington said.
Currington said video from the bar shows Price in the bar and it shows him outside of the bar. It does not show any sign of anyone firing at him on the outside of the building.
Gadd testified that on the morning of the shooting, there was a fight between two women in the bar and their boyfriends got involved. She used spray to break up the fight.
After clearing the bar, she and employees locked the doors and began cleaning up. At one point, Gadd said someone said they heard shooting outside.
"I went out onto the rear deck but I did not see or hear anything," Gadd said. "I locked the rear door and continued cleaning."
"I feel terrible about what happened," Gadd said. "We initially did not reopen the bar out of respect to the Dial family."
Later, however, Gadd said she choose not to reopen after a meeting with Councilmen Eddie Colbert and Vince Flask, as well as with city Treasurer John Homlitas, when it was suggested that the bar would not be reopened.
Police Capt. Janice Gilmore testified that from 2006 through 2011, the average number of calls for service the department responded at Olympic Inn on a yearly basis was 20. The number of calls increased to 27 in 2012.
"Disturbances, fights and reported assaults continued to escalate in their seriousness," Gilmore read from a report she organized. "Officers frequently responded to shots fired."
There were four instances, including the Aug. 4 shooting, in which gunshots were heard outside the establishment. There were three other instances in which guns were seen and three times police responded to reported assaults, she said.
Gilmore testified talking to Gadd in 2011 about ways she could improve security at the bar, including adding security lights, metal detectors and surveillance cameras, and the possibility of hiring off-duty police officers.
"She did everything recommended but hire the off-duty police officers," Zellers said.
Gilmore testified that in the police department's opinion, the license should not be renewed.
Ohio Department of Public Safety enforcement agents Kenneth Van Horn and Joe Chamberlin each testified about going into Olympic Inn on several occasions between 2009 and 2011 for underage drinking and gambling.