Malevolent Imagination

Phil Fasciana, aka Not the Kerry King Impersonator (via Flickr)

My birthday was great.  I got a six pack of foreign beer, had an awesome dinner, and Malevolent Creation guitarist Phil Fasciana shot a homeless crackhead in the face and killed him.  For one day I was the luckiest boy in the world!

The story he told sounded like something out of a Steven Seagal movie; last minute bullet dodges, heroic tackles, and a point blank gunslinging showdown.  Seagal would have broken a few bones in addition to all that, but you can’t ask for martial arts greatness from a death metal guitarist.  Here’s the official story as he told it:

• “I went in this little store on my way home to get a chocolate milk, of all things, and little did I know, I was walking into a life-or-death situation,” he says. “When I walked into the store, I did not notice anyone else in the store until someone started screaming at me and pointed a gun at me. I nearly shit myself, because the dude looked wacked out of his mind and fired four shots directly at me and I went down to the ground because I thought I was surely shot. After about 30 seconds, I realized I was not hit at all and the shooter thought I was dead or injured and started attacking the store worker when I snuck up behind the burglar and talked [to] him and took the gun out of his hands and told him to get out of the store. He then reached in his sock and pulled another gun out and pointed it at me and that’s when I fired two shots into his head, killing him instantly!  Never in my life has anything so twisted happened to me before and I would like to forget it ever happened, but I had no other choice. Lucky for me, the stupid crackhead burglar had the worst aim in the world and missed me with all four shots from about 10 feet away! Needless to say, all charges have been dropped and the store owner has offered me a lifetime of chocolate milk! Ha Ha!  I have been in some scary situations before, but having someone shoot out you from that close and miss is a fucking miracle and I have no remorse for killing the assailant who tried to take my life and the store owner’s.”

Epic.  The first time I read it I was like “this is unbelievable, what was he thinking?!”  First of all, he goes in there for a chocolate milk (not very death metal) and almost immediately gets four shots fired in his general direction – all of which miss.  How does that happen?  The robber must have been the worst shot of all time to miss like that!  Then, Fasciana has the balls to sneak up behind the fucker, talk to him, and then just takes the gun from him?  He probably said “hey, look over there” and snatched it once the thug turned away.

Yeah – that’s probably what he did.

Finally, the robber tries to whip out a second firearm so he can miss again but Fasciana, being the closet marksman he apparently is, gives him the old 1-2 headshot and that’s all she wrote!

Shang Tsung (via SkepticalCommunity.com)

If we were to stick to Mortal Kombat terms, Fasciana also achieved a “flawless victory” by Keanu Reeves-ing the first four shots.  Bonus points.

Then, for some reason, Fasciana decides to tell the story again.  Why?  Well…uh…because he wants to put it behind him.  Yeah.  He wants to put this behind him, and in order to do that, he needs to talk about it again.  What the fuck.

• “Due to the ridiculous amounts of e-mails, MySpace messages, text messages and phone calls concerning my misfortune a few days ago which resulted in someone dying, I need to straighten a few things out that have been taken out of context and are wrong about the story.  When I walked into that store to buy something, I had no idea the store was in the middle of being robbed. I immediately felt something was wrong when I walked in, because it was very quiet and the man working behind the counter was staring at me like I was gonna rob the store. When that 80-pound homeless crackhead yelled at me and pointed his gun at me and fired four shots at me, I thought I was surely dead and had no time to react! After realizing I was not hit, I slowly crawled around to the back of the store, and while the gunman was screaming at the worker, I ran down the isle he was in and tackled him with the intention of beating the living shit out of him. I did not try approaching this man and try reasoning with him and take the gun from his hands like it was reported on Blabbermouth the other day. The guy already shot at me four times and surely would have shot at me again if he knew I was still alive and I’m not retarded enough to think I could talk my way out of that kind of situation.  When I tackled him and starting beating the shit out of him with the dude working there, he dropped the gun and I grabbed it. I had no intention of shooting him until he reached for another gun in his sneaker and looked at me, and before he got the chance to shoot at me again, that’s when I shot him in the face two times and put an end to that whole nightmare!  By no means am I a hero. I could have easily just ran out of the store like a pussy after realizing I was not shot and left the store worker to most likely get killed, but I was so pissed I just wanted to beat the fuck out of that loser who just tried to end my life over nothing. Anyone in my situation may have done the same thing, but nobody knows when something like that could happen to yourself or how to react just like me.  The gunman was a homeless crackhead who was living somewhere behind the plaza the store was in and has apparently been a problem for a long time, and to this day, the police still cannot identify the man because he has no identification and nobody will come forward and tell the police who he is.  I have a lot of personal family problems that are far worse then what I just went through and asked the police if it was possible to keep this story from getting in the press and having my dying father and grandfather have to know about something like that happening to me.  As for the idiots who are calling me a murderer and other ridiculous things, [you] can FUCK OFF!!!! I didn’t want this to happen to me and I surely did not wake up that day knowing I was going to kill someone trying to defend myself over a fucking chocolate milk I wanted to buy from a store!  I would appreciate some alone time and for this whole thing to blow over and stop making a big deal about what happened to me, if at all possible. Let some crackhead who is foaming at the mouth point a 45 gun at you and start shooting at you and try to imagine what you would do. You don’t think I was scared? I just couldn’t believe he didn’t hit me with at least one of the four bullets he fired directly at me.  Needless to say, it’s over and done with and cannot be taken back, and I will have to live with that image in my head for the rest of my life, but at least I am alive and can get back on tour with my band MALEVOLENT CREATION for our Mexico, South American and European tours starting in a few weeks. Hopefully that will keep my mind off all the negative shit that is surrounding me.”

By now, you’ve probably noticed that this version of the story doesn’t exactly match up with the first version.  Veeeeeeeery interesting.  Here are the differences:

1. Instead of the robber being referred to as your run-of-the-mill “burglar”, he is now described as an “80 pound crackhead”.
2. Instead of sneaking up on this crackhead like we had heard before, Fasciana now says he ran down the isle like a middle linebacker and tackled the bitch.
3. Instead of merely grabbing the gun and telling the crackhead to get out of the store like before, now he goes all Rocky Balboa and beats the shit out of him to get the gun.

You may say those are small changes that don’t amount to much considering one person is still dead and Fasciana still delivered the deathblow.  However, some are saying more changes will come out soon – changes so big that they change the story entirely.  Are we talking about murder?  Could Fasciana have covered up a homicide by claiming self-defense?  Not really.  I mean it’s possible, but what we’re really talking about is the event itself.  Some people claim that the altercation, whether provoked by one side or the other, didn’t happen at all.  Who, you say?  How about Detective Mark Shotwell (appropriate name) from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department?

• “This did not happen,” Shotwell said. “Our last murder was on June 22 and Fasciana was not involved. I’m certain of this. Even if the death was a result of self-defense, it would still be classed as a homicide and investigated as such.  All witnesses, reportees, victims and suspects are entered into a database, but the most recent entry for Fasciana is on April 1, involving him and a female in a domestic dispute.  There are about 15 suburbs near Fort Lauderdale, but all murders use the Broward County Medical Examiner’s office for autopsies — mandatory in a homicide. There have been no murders in the entire county during July.  Homeless crackheads would trade a gun as soon as they got it and I’ve never seen one with two guns. And the scenario as described would have made headlines — even in Miami.”

So…he made it up?

Something about this just doesn’t add up.  If Fasciana did kill an 80 pound homeless crackhead with 2 guns, then it’s an amazing story – but if he didn’t kill him, it might be an even more amazing story.  Why would you make up something like this?  Not even children can come up with such wild-yet-believable stories.  Seems like a pretty long stretch for a publicity stunt, especially since it involves the death of another human being.  Is this a tragic event or the most metal advertising campaign ever?

Fasciana provided a brief response to Shotwell’s comments:

• “What happened is true and I really don’t know how it leaked into Blabbermouth because I never told anyone about it.”

Wait, what?  He was the one who told the story in the first place!  Look at this:

• (For the record, Fasciana’s original statement was sent to BLABBERMOUTH.NET from one of two separate e-mail accounts that Phil has confirmed that he is in control of. BLABBERMOUTH.NET did not edit Fasciana’s comments except for clarity and no other person contributed to the story.)

What is that supposed to mean?!  This is a 360 degree mindfuck and a half, nobody knows what to believe.  Phil says there is a surveillance tape of the whole thing that was grabbed by the cops for evidence and they aren’t releasing it, but until we see it people have plenty of reasons to be skeptical.

Needless to say, this is far from over.  I’m sure it won’t be long before Phil feels the need to put it behind him some more and retell the story with even more action-packed machismo.  Get ready for Malevolent Creation vs. the Fort Lauderdale Police Department!