Evidence of this is seen in the Banner’s newly transcribed audio recordings of the 2022 court hearings. During the first hearing at Eastside District Court, on August 4, 2022, Yates, TURNSTILE’s lead singer, explained that “recent threats” had made the remaining four members of the band feel that it was necessary for “to file this peace order just to neutralize threats to our physical safety.” Ebert’s behavior in the preceding years had “elevated” due to “heavy drug use,” Yates said, and drummer Daniel Fang concurred: “We collectively decided that [Ebert] was unfit to play in the band.”
Upon being removed from the band, however, Ebert’s behavior escalated even further: according to Yates’ testimony, Ebert told his ex-bandmates that they needed to send him $10,000 or physical harm would come to them. Yates describes the text messages as “just pretty clear threats based on just the language that he’s kind of used against us.” As Fang put it, “Our evaluation is that he’s become resentful. He’s been spiraling with his acute drug use. In a group chat that was addressed to all of us, he threatened our safety.” Bassist Frank Lyons emphasized the band’s fearful uncertainty as to what Ebert “really will or won’t do,” and guitarist Pat McCrory highlighted the importance of taking these threats seriously. The judge presiding over this initial hearing, Baltimore District Judge Jennifer Etheridge, agreed to grant the band a temporary restraining order while the case continued.
The trial picked up once again at the following hearing on August 11, but unfortunately, the judge for this proceeding, District Judge Carol M. Johnson, was more skeptical, insisting that she needed to hear evidence of acted-upon threats within the past 30 days in order to grant the full peace order. Yates explained that Ebert had not been touring with the band for eight months, as an attempt at giving him “time to decompress” while the band offered “help and kind of anything we can to kind of work towards playing together again.” The band met up at Ebert’s house during this time for an intervention, in which Ebert denied he needed to go to rehab. After this, Ebert called Yates and said he was owed money, then sent “a string of texts that involved just threats to [the band’s] safety.” Fang, Lyons, and McCrory confirmed this timeline, but said that nothing happened following the threats. Ebert, for his part, claimed he was “specifically speaking in terms of bad karma when I was saying ‘Bad things are going to occur,’ whether I would like them to or not.”
Yates told Johnson that “our whole reason for this peace order is because we truly just felt it was not safe to communicate any further,” at least not outside of a “safe and neutral environment” run by external counsel. However, Johnson denied the peace order, saying that Ebert did not seem to act on those threats in the past 30 days. “You guys have known each other for a very long time,” she said. “It seems like this is in fact just aberrant behavior of someone who was under the influence.” She ruled that there was no present evidence that Ebert would commit any legitimate acts against the band in the future.
Currently, Brendan Yates’ father is recovering in a Baltimore hospital after Ebert made what seems to have been a very sincere attempt on his life. TURNSTILE said in their statement: “We are grateful that Mr. Yates survived, has successfully undergone surgery, and we’re hoping for the best possible outcome in his recovery.”
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