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.
A transgender foster care advocate is disputing U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace's account of an encounter that resulted in an Illinois man's arrest, according to The Hill.
The South Carolina Republican, who has sought the spotlight as part of an attempt to ban transgender women from entering female-designated facilities on all federal properties, claimed that she was "physically accosted" by a "pro-trans man" on Tuesday.
U.S. Capitol Police subsequently confirmed that they had arrested 33-year-old James McIntyre of Illinois in connection with the incident, which occurred at a foster care youth advocacy event at the Rayburn House Office Building.
A California man with neo-Nazi ties convicted of murdering a gay, Jewish University of Pennsylvania student has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Samuel Woodward, 27, was convicted in July for the 2018 fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein. He was sentenced last Friday in a Southern California courtroom.
Woodward stabbed the college sophomore, with whom he had attended high school, 28 times in the face and head and buried Bernstein's body in a shallow grave.
During sentencing, Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger said that evidence presented at trial showed Woodward had planned the murder. She refused to override the jury's findings that the crime had been motivated, in part, by Bernstein being gay. She denied Woodward probation, noting that he had not shown any signs of remorse for the crime, which she called a "true tragedy."
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