Murder charge filed in nightclub stabbing

RALEIGH -- Wallace Reynold Bass Jr. of Garner is only 24 but has managed to rack up several criminal convictions for drugs, carrying a gun on school property and violating probation.

Now he faces a much more serious charge of murder after Raleigh police arrested him in connection with the fatal stabbing of a 21-year-old man Friday morning inside a downtown nightclub.

Police charged Bass, of 1029 Buckhorn Road, with the fatal stabbing of Daniel Dietmar Smith, 21, whose address was not immediately available. The slaying occurred about 2:15 a.m. at the West Side Story nightclub at 200 S. West St., court records show.

Police arrested Bass at the nightclub.

"An off-duty police officer working outside of the club was alerted that there had been a stabbing," police spokesman Jim Sughrue said Friday night. "The officer called other officers to the scene, and he [Bass] was detained without further incident."

Smith died while in surgery at WakeMed's Raleigh Campus.

The stabbing followed heated verbal altercations between the two men, said Sughrue, who was not sure whether the victim and suspect knew each other.

The men had two verbal altercations inside the club before the violence erupted, Sughrue said.

"They had a verbal altercation in the club, then they had apparently come up on each other again," the police spokesman said. "There was another verbal altercation. Then it escalated."

Bass remained in the Wake County jail Friday night without benefit of bail, court records show.