A bartender accused of serving a Plano man who was drunk and went on to kill eight people is getting some surprise support – from the mother one of his victims.
The bartender, Lindsey Glass, was arrested last week and charged with serving someone who was drunk, a misdemeanor. She faces a year behind bars.
"I don't blame that bartender," Debbie Lane said. "I feel badly for her that she has gotten caught up in this vortex because of an evil man."
Lane's daughter, Meredith Hight, was just days away from getting divorced from her husband Spencer.
She threw a Dallas Cowboys watch party at her home in September 2017 when Spencer Hight showed up and killed her and seven others in one of the worst mass killings in North Texas history.
According to her arrest warrant, Hight had come from the bar where Glass worked and surveillance video showed he was intoxicated.
Glass sent a text to another bartender, saying, "Spencer has a big knife on the bar and is spinning it and just asked for his tab and said I have to go do some dirty work ... Psychoooooooo."
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The bartender's attorneys point out she was the first to alert police after following Hight to his wife's house and calling 911 a full five minutes before he started shooting.
"It seems like a dangerous precedent to say if you see something out of the ordinary, and then you go and alert someone, 20 months later you are going to be prosecuted," said attorney Rebekah Perlstein. "She did the right thing."
His former mother-in-law said the bartender may not have realized how drunk Spencer Hight was.
"(He) was a blackout drunk who was very well practiced at pretending he was sober and he was good at it," Lane said. "I believe he fooled her because he fooled us."
A Dallas attorney who represents four of the eight victims argues the bartender's arrest was entirely appropriate.
The lawyer, Daniel Garrigan, told the Washington Post if Glass had called police earlier or stopped serving the suspect, those killed might still be alive today.
Garrigan did not return two phone calls from NBC 5.
