20 survivors of Little Rock nightclub shooting file suit against club owner
LITTLE ROCK AR November 30 2018 Twenty survivors of a gang shooting at a Little Rock nightclub last year are suing the club’s owner on accusations of negligence.
The suit filed Wednesday in Pulaski County Circuit Court names Herman Lewis Sr., the owner of the shuttered Power Ultra Lounge in downtown Little Rock, as a defendant. A performance by Memphis rapper Ricky Hampton at the club July 1, 2017, ended in a shootout between factions of the Bloods and Crips street gangs. Twenty-five people were shot. At least three others were injured as hundreds of people rushed toward the exits. There were no deaths.
The suit claims that the concert that night was promoted with images of violence and guns, and club owners should have done more to keep the venue safe. After the shooting, police reportedly found 13 weapons at the club, including a Kel-Tec Sub-2000 foldable semi-automatic rifle.
“There were people who were frisked and wanded on the way in,” Michigan attorney Solomon Radner, who represents the plaintiffs, said Wednesday. “That being the case, there’s no possible way that all those guns made it in there without security knowing about it.”
According to police, two off-duty officers working in the area as security guards confronted an armed man as he walked into the club that night. Police said the man, a member of Hampton’s entourage, went inside through a back entrance.
Before the shooting, records show that police responded to at least 37 civil and criminal complaints at the club ranging from gunfire to petty theft. The business was zoned as a restaurant and had been operating as a nightclub illegally, according to the city.
“This was a foreseeable incident that could have easily been prevented if the business and property owners had chosen to care more and to do more,” North Little Rock attorney Joshua Gillispie said.
Efforts to contact Lewis for comment Wednesday were not successful.
The suit also names 6th & Center LLC as a defendant. The company owns the building where the shooting happened.
The plaintiffs, who are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, include people who were shot and trampled, along with those who suffered psychological damage, the suit says.
The person suspected of firing the first shots at the club, Tyler Clay Jackson, 20, was arrested in October 2017. He faces 10 counts of aggravated assault, one for each shot he’s accused of firing. He also faces two counts of second-degree battery, one for each person he’s accused of shooting.
Hampton’s bodyguard, Kentrell Gwynn, 26, is also accused of firing shots at the club. Another suspected shooter, Cordero Ragland, 26, of Memphis, was arrested in April on charges of aggravated assault.
The suit announced Wednesday is among several filed in connection with the nightclub shooting. The youngest person injured in the shooting, Marquette Muhammad, then 16, filed suit in July against Jackson, Hampton, Ragland and Gwynn. Muhammad, who suffered a spinal cord injury, is seeking punitive damages.
Dajuana Mixon, who was shot in the shoulder, filed suit against Lewis in April on accusations of negligence and deceptive and unconscionable trade practices.
Court records show that another person injured in the shooting, Patrick Hardy, sued Lewis but withdrew the suit in October 2017. He’s among the 20 plaintiffs in the suit filed Wednesday.
KATV
