WACO, Texas — Bullets ricocheted around the parking lot of Twin Peaks, the Waco restaurant where a motorcycle gang shootout left nine dead, just minutes after Theron Rhoten pulled in on his vintage Harley chopper for a regional motorcycle club meeting, according to Rhoten’s wife.

Katie Rhoten told The Associated Press that her husband ran for cover and was later arrested, along with antique motorcycle enthusiast friends and other “nonviolent, noncriminal people.” Authorities swept up around 170 bikers who had descended on the restaurant for what one club member described as a gathering to discuss laws protecting motorcycle riders.

“He’s good to his family,” she said. “He doesn’t drink; he doesn’t do drugs; he doesn’t party. He’s just got a passion for motorcycles.”

McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara and Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton declined to comment Tuesday on allegations that innocent bikers were arrested. Police have said the gathering of five biker groups was to resolve a dispute over turf.

Katie Rhoten said her husband, a mechanic from Austin, called her from jail and said that he and two other members of Vise Grip Club ducked and ran for cover as the violence that left 18 people injured raged around them.

Police said the melee started with a parking dispute and someone running over a gang member’s foot, and that an uninvited biker group also appeared. Preliminary autopsy results indicated that all of the dead were shot, some in the head, neck or chest. Police have acknowledged firing on armed bikers, but it is not clear how many of the dead were shot by gang members and how many were shot by officers.

The arrested bikers have all been charged with engaging in organized crime and each is being held on $1 million bonds. It is unclear how long they will remain in custody.

“Unless they try to make some other arrangement to move them through it more quickly, it could be weeks and possibly months” before the jailed bikers have bond-reduction hearings, said William Smith, an attorney who has met with several of the inmates.