A man was critically injured after being stabbed during an altercation with a bouncer inside a gay bar in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The incident occurred around 2 a.m. on Saturday, December 28, at the Saloon, an LGBTQ venue located at the corner of Hennepin Avenue and 9th Street, reports The Minnesota Star Tribune.
The 27-year-old man, whose identity has not been released, had been stabbed and was transported by emergency medical personnel to a local hospital. He suffered critical injuries.
Police have not yet disclosed the circumstances that led to the altercation.
The bouncer, a 33-year-old man from Newport, Minnesota, was also treated for injuries at a local hospital before being booked into the Hennepin County Jail on a charge of first-degree assault.
Christopher Bock, the CEO of the Saloon, said it’s unclear what precipitated the fight.
“I’m still trying to figure out if they knew each other and how they knew each other,” Bock told the Star Tribune.
Bock added that video from surveillance cameras inside the bar offered “not very good angles” of the altercation.
“Nightclubs are tough,” Bock told the newspaper. “A lot of things happen.… For New Year’s Eve, we’re going to double down and bring in private security to add a couple more guys to the roster.”
Confrontations between staff or security and patrons at nightlife venues, although infrequent, can be part of the job at any establishment selling liquor.
Two years ago, a Minneapolis man was arrested after allegedly threatening the staff at 19 Bar, the city’s oldest continuously operating LGBTQ bar, and allegedly pulling out a .45 caliber Glock following a confrontation with a bartender.
That man, Conell Walter Harris, eventually pleaded guilty to one count of felony possession of a firearm, and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
Andrei Kotov, the director of a travel agency that allegedly catered to gay customers in Russia, was found dead in custody in "Vodnik," a pre-trial detention center in Moscow.
According to OVD-Info, an independent human rights group that tracks arrests in Russia, Kotov was found dead in his cell in the early morning hours of December 29. His lawyer, Leysan Mannapova, told the outlet that an investigator told her the cause of death was suicide.
The Russian state-run media outlet TASS reported that prison officials found the body around 2 a.m. The pro-Kremlin newspaper MK and the independent online news site Baza both reported Kotov's body was covered in blood and had injuries consistent with suicide.
Joey Lamar Ellis, a Houston park ranger, was indicted on December 3 by a federal grand jury for repeatedly abusing his authority by stopping, detaining, and assaulting gay men who visited city parks late at night or in the early morning. The 34-year-old faces 20 counts of civil rights violations for targeting eight different men whom he believed to be gay.
Ellis has been arrested and taken into custody, according to Houston CBS affiliate KHOU.
According to the charges, Ellis carried out a targeted campaign of extortion at several different parks in the Houston area. He allegedly positioned his city-issued vehicle behind victims' vehicles to prevent them from leaving.
A judge denied Gerald Radford's attempt to invoke the Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law to avoid prosecution for fatally shooting a gay man in Tampa earlier this year. The 66-year-old will now face a jury trial on charges of second-degree murder and a hate crime enhancement for killing 52-year-old John Walter Lay at the West Dog Park on February 2, 2024.
Radford repeatedly harassed Lay for more than two years, calling him a homophobic slur and making derogatory remarks about Lay's sexual orientation, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. That harassment culminated in an altercation between the two men, which ended with Radford fatally shooting Lay.
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