Reports have abounded about the Bam Margera beating--found lying in the street and not far from his night club, The Note. Beaten to severe concussion with a bat or pipe, the beating was not part of a Jack Ass stunt or his new movie.
Police say the Bam Margera beating that happened Saturday morning outside The Note nightspot was no traditional Jack Ass stunt. Elizabeth Ray, 59, who lives behind the club, is charged with aggravated assault and other offenses in the beating of Brandon "Bam" Margera, the 30-year-old skateboarder and MTV celebrity.
Margera was briefly hospitalized with a severe concussion from the beating. The injuries were rough enough to send Bam Margera to Crozer-Chester Medical Center, where his mother and sometime costar, April Margera, said he was in intensive care for most of the day. But the concussion was not severe enough, Margera's mom says, to keep the stunt artist and skateboarder from getting a doctor's permission to fly out to Hollywood-- where Margera is frantically rewriting the end to his next movie, Jackass 3-D.
Looks like he missed out on that real life footage as end material.
"I begged him not to go," April Margera said. "But I understand that millions of dollars were at stake."
By all means, money before health.
Bam Margera was discovered lying on his stomach in the middle of South Matlack Street in his native West Chester, near 2 a.m. Saturday--bleeding from a gash on the left side of his head. The skateboarder was just around the corner from The Note, the night club Margera co-owns.
Margera wasn't just conscious, the Jack Ass star was pissed off at Ray. The criminal legal complaint quotes Margera as saying repeatedly, "Why did you hit me, you crazy b-?" and "I pay your rent."
That wasn't the worst of it, according to a neighbor and witness. Michael Jamal Jackson said he attended West Chester East High School with Bam Margera--that he was less than a block away when he heard Margera direct racial epithets at Ray before blows from the pipe or bat hit Margera's head. "The next thing you know, she cracked him [Bam Margera] over the head," Jackson said.
The criminal complaint against Ray said that the weapon used by her, on Margera, was either a bat or a pipe. Jackson said Ray, or "Ms. Liz," as he called her, had complained repeatedly about noise at the club--from crowds that gather outside after the The Note club closes for business. He said walls that The Note had specially installed to lessen the club's noise don't make much difference in decreasing the sound. West Chester Police Chief Scott L. Bohn said The Note night club had not generated a disproportionate number of complaints about noise or disorderly conduct with the police department.
April Margera said Ray had had past run-ins with her son, Bam, and had even punched the Jack Ass star in the face, about a year and a half ago. Ray's criminal record includes convictions for assault, robbery, and disorderly conduct--but not charges for the Bam Margera previous incident: "He [Bam] didn't want to press charges," April Margera said.
She said she believed Bam and The Note club co-owner had given Ray money in the past in an effort to appease her about the noise complaints she issued.
Ray says lawyers had instructed her not to speak with the press. "All I'll say is, my mother has owned this house for 60 years and she will not be disturbed," said Ray, now free from jail after posting $10,000 unsecured bail. Lauren Petitti, who works at a hair salon business located on the corner between Ray's home and The Note night club, said Ray had her hands full with taking care of her aging, ailing mother. "She probably just took it [her stress or frustrations] out on the wrong person," Petitti said. "She gets no help with her mom, and she's in that house all day long."
Bam Margera, who left high school to prove that gross-out high jinks equal box-office big money, has been on one side or the other of myriad brushes with the law. In 2004, Margera's request to stage a parade in West Chester was denied because of his history, but two years later Bam insisted he could exercise restraint, and filmed a peaceful and arrest-free parade sequence for a borroughs Christmas special.
By the end of 2008, Bam Margera had invested money in The Note club and become a West Chester entrepreneur. His mother, who has appeared with Margera on television (his latest show: Viva La Bam), said she and her husband, Phil (another costar), are flying to Los Angeles on Thursday to find out what their role in their son's latest Jack Ass movie will be.
She said she has talked to the producers and told them that in light of the concussion, the kind of over-the-top MGM-like finales that her son loves are off-limits, for now. "He can't do what he was supposed to do, but I don't even know what that was," she said. "We never find out what we're doing until he tells us to do it."
Well, it might not be too hard to keep Bam from doing that stunt--since he may not be able to even remember it.