On that fateful August 4th night, most of the nine were killed near where Ganger now stood — and 37 more would be injured — when a 24-year-old gunman from Bellbrook, who was clad in black body armor, opened fire on the crowd with an AR-15 style weapon equipped with a 100-round capacity magazine.
He did all his damage in just 32 seconds before Ganger — a former Troy High School and Urbana University fullback and current, hardcore professional wrestler — ignored the bullet wound in his own right leg and turned himself into a frightened-but-determined bowling ball of a barricade.
The 5-foot-5, 225-pound Ganger — who once bulled the way for Troy’s Ryan Brewer to run for a then-state record 2,856 yards as a senior — hunkered into a stance in the doorway to Ned Peppers as the killer ran straight toward the bar’s entrance.
When he saw Ganger staring back at him, the killer momentarily hesitated and that gave the Dayton policemen running onto the scene the chance to shoot him dead. He fell a step from the door, behind which were as many as 200 panicked people who had sought refuge and, basically, were trapped.
The wounded Ganger took the weapon from the killer, pressed him down until police arrived and then hobbled into the street to try to assist the other injured and dying, some of whom he knew.
When he spoke briefly on Friday, the 45-year-old Ganger focused on a few points while also saluting the police and first responders as “the real heroes” that night.
Among the things he stressed:
»Don’t just remember the nine people today. Remember them every day.
»When you search for solutions, don’t just talk about guns. Also focus on the mental health issues of young males.
And this wasn’t just lip service from him.
Ganger practices what he preaches a couple of ways.
He does it by lending an ear and offering sage advice as a peer support specialist with RI International, a non-profit mental health organization. He works at the living facility run by OneFifteen, which deals with behavioral health and substance use disorders.
And other times Ganger does so by using anything from barbed wire, staple guns, tacks and wooden shish kabob sticks pushed into his scalp to metal chairs smashed over his head.
That’s the Jeremy Ganger you can see in the coming days when he’s featured in hardcore wrestling shows in the Dayton area – primarily with the Xtreme Valley Wrestling promotion.
He’s their Street Fight Champ and is taking part in their shows Tuesday and Saturday night at the Unity Banquet Center on Cincinnato Street in Dayton. Friday night he’ll wrestle at a Railroad Days show in Carlisle.
He was in the ring this past Tuesday night in Dayton, as well. Over the past two decades he’s wrestled on and off with a few different regional groups. At one time he was billed as Pitbull.
Now his ring persona is defined by the Oregon District shooting four years ago,
“When I wrestle, I wear pants with a big No. 9 on each leg,” he said. “And before and after each match, I hold up nine fingers. It’s a way I remember the nine victims from that night.
“The amazing thing – especially when I’m here in Dayton – is that the crowd responds and they all hold up nine fingers, as well. At that moment, we all remember the nine.”
When he won the circuit’s Street Fight title, he was given an oversized championship belt with a big silver plate on the front.
But he deserves much more than that said Mike Turner, the father of 30-year-old Logan Turner, who was one of the nine people killed that night in the Oregon District:
“I can’t understand how Jeremy Ganger hasn’t gone nuts with the stuff he saw and experienced that night. He stared the guy right in the eyes. If that guy had gotten inside Ned Peppers, there would have been nothing but devastation.
“Jeremy saved hundreds of lives. I do believe that whole heartedly. He should get some kind of award from the state of Ohio or the federal government…Somebody. No one deserves it more.”
Ganger’s heroic actions, though, have come with a real personal toll.
“I saw a lot of things that night I wish I’d never seen, things I can’t forget.” he once told me. “I saw people get shot and people die just a few feet away. And I saw the gunman coming straight for our place. He looked me straight in the eye. He had pure hate in his heart.”
All that, he said, has left him with PTSD, persistent nightmares — he woke up recently, crying out the killer’s name — and survivor’s guilt:
“I think. ‘Why am I alive, enjoying my life and those other people — some of them with kids of their own, all of them with a life in front of them — were killed?’”
Although he’s making strides with the tortures he’s felt — thanks especially to ongoing counseling, a daughter who’s soon to be three and that new job helping people in need — he’s found himself targeted by hateful trolls.
Since the massacre — especially around the August 4 anniversary — he’s gotten cruel suggestions and threats from anonymous people on social media accounts.
“They’ve told me I should kill myself, that I don’t deserve to be here,” he said quietly. “But now someone is taking it farther.”
He took out his phone and showed me some of the messages and images he’s received.
Above the photo of a severed, mutilated head, was a threat that read:
“I got the order to go against your family. If you love them call me as soon as you can…”
When Ganger responded: “I passed this number on to the police,” he got a reply:
“I don’t care about police. You’re going to be the next one.”
Ganger said the Troy police visited his home:
“They said this was just a scam, but it’s not funny. Not with my family mentioned.
“I want to think it wasn’t anyone that was there that night – at least I hope not. I mean you couldn’t react like this if you experienced what we saw. That’s why I think it’s just some sick person who gets thrills out of this kind of stuff.
“But the police said it can’t be ignored.”
Survivor’s guilt
For the first six months after his and Becky’s daughter, Thea, was born, Ganger didn’t acknowledge her publicly.
“I felt guilty,” he said quietly. “She was born 10 days after the first anniversary of the killings. I felt, ‘How can you go around being happy and celebrating a life when so many people are still grieving those who were lost?’”
His troubled outlook was magnified because he continued to work the door at Ned Peppers and then — until just two months ago — across the street at Newcom’s Tavern. Places he’d see and people he’d meet would sometimes trigger the difficult memories.
Some 18 months after the shooting he said he was really struggling until a chance encounter changed all that.
He said he’d been out with friends in the Oregon District and found himself in a terrible downwards spiral. Making his way back up I-75 at about 1:30 in the morning — in tears and with dark thoughts about himself — he suddenly was pulled over for speeding by a state highway patrol trooper.
“When he came up and I rolled down my window, he looked in and said ‘Jeremy?’” Ganger remembered. “He had responded to the shootings that night in the Oregon District and he recognized me.
“He could tell that I’d been crying and was going through some rough stuff. He kept the lights going on top of his car and asked if he could get in my car. He sat and talked to me a long time about religion and not being afraid to get help for my PTSD, things like that.”
The trooper, Alex Hogan, told former Dayton 24/7 Now (WKEF-TV) reporter Courtney Wheaton:
“I knew the effects of PTSD that my brother went through from Afghanistan, and I know how that can affect somebody. You have flashbacks, night tremors, so I felt it was really important to see what he was feeling – even if it was just to give him some advice or see if he needed to see someone professionally.”
Ganger and the trooper met again at a diner in the Oregon District and have stayed in touch.
“He told me, ‘People want to see you happy,’” Ganger said. “He told me he had kids and they helped him through what he sees every day on the road.
“Early on, because of the guilt, I kept my daughter secret. I didn’t tell nobody about her, and I missed so many things in her life. The first time she said ‘Daddy,’ I was at the bar working. It’s the same for her first steps.
“Alex got me to understand what I was missing and how I should share it.”
Ganger said another guardian angel – this one from CareSource – saw his story and thought he would make a good peer counselor for people in need.
He guided him to the classes he should take at Sinclair to go get certified – he’s a graduate of the Emerging Leaders Program – and that has led, Ganger said, “to the best job I’ve ever had in my life.
“I actually can’t wait to go to work in the morning.”
‘I love helping people’
His new outlook was evident as we sat together in the living room of his Troy home this week while Becky played with Thea in the next room.
A couple of times his daughter came in and sidled up to him for a kiss or just to tease him. Once, with a sudden overflow of sweetness, she tried to coax him into giving the OK for a snack her mom already had nixed.
“All she has to do is look at him and bat an eyelash and she gets him to give in,” Becky laughed.
Becky recalled when she first met Jeremy. “Back then, he looked like a mini Vin Diesel,” she said with a laugh.
“But what really stood out was how very giving he was. He goes out of his way and tries his best to help people. And if they screw him over, he’s still forgiving. He just has a good heart.”
People sensed that after the Oregon District shootings four years ago and some of the letters and cards he got afterward reflected such sentiment.
One girl wrote to thank him for saving her life.
Another person sent a card with a bible verse, John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, a man lay down his life for his friends.”
The WWE honored him in Florida and wrestling legend Paul “Triple H” Levesque, now a WWE executive, called him into the ring and presented him with a WWE NXT championship belt as they crowd chanted “You deserve it!”
The Dayton Dragons brought him onto the field and the Dayton Flyers saluted him in the regular season finale against George Washington during that magical 29-2 season. Uncharacteristically, UD was playing poorly that game and had been trailing until Ganger walked onto the Arena floor and rallied the standing, cheering crowd and especially the team.
He was given a basketball signed by coach Anthony Grant and the players and it’s now displayed in a back room at his house, alongside some framed proclamations and the WWE hardware.
One of his best rewards these days comes when he goes to work, he said:
“The idea of seeing people get clean or deal with the mental issues they have, find a job and get their lives together and become happy again – that’s so rewarding.
“I love helping people.
“I’m beginning to realize there was a reason I was spared that night.”
Actually, there are several, including that charming little girl in the next room; the people he helps at work; and even that guy waiting across the ring from him with an upraised chair.
He knows when the match ends, he’ll hold up nine fingers as he stands in the ring.
And the crowd will roar with approval and raise nine fingers back to him.
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