A bouncer and two customers were shot at closing early last Saturday morning in a crowded hallway near the front door of the Mr. Lucky club, police say.
There were fights and arguments both inside and outside the nightspot across the street from KeyArena shortly before the April 15 shooting, said police spokesman Sean Whitcomb.
One shooter had been in the club, but left and returned with another man, Whitcomb added. "And both he and his colleague stood in the doorway and fired into the crowd."
The 38-year-old bouncer was hit in the chest, a man in his 20s was hit in the hip and an underage man who is in his mid-20s was hit in the leg, Whitcomb said.
"Considering that the two of them shot into a crowd, we're very fortunate that more people weren't hit," Whitcomb said. The victims were taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment, and their injuries appeared to be non-life-threatening, he said.
Police had already received a call from a nearby resident about a disturbance in the parking lot that involved 15 to 20 people who were shouting, fighting and running when the shots were fired, Whitcomb added.
A shooting gallery
It's not the first time people have been shot in Lower Queen Anne by customers associated with the venue.
A Mr. Lucky bouncer trying to break up a fight outside after closing last year was shot in the leg, and a Queen Anne man just walking down the street with his girlfriend was hit and paralyzed by a stray shot fired near the club in 2003. The parking lot outside the bar was also the scene in 2004 of a customer's beating death that police later ruled to be an act of self defense.
Many in the neighborhood wonder why the bar is still open. "I think they should get shut down," said bartender Liz Varvaro at Floyd's Place two blocks up the street from Mr. Lucky on First Avenue North. She said the general consensus in the neighborhood is the same.
"There is no reason the place should have that many problems-especially in Queen Anne," added Varvaro, who worried that the violence might spill over into her bar. "I think it's frustrating."
Andrea Utley, a bartender at the Mirabeau Room on Queen Anne Avenue also thinks Mr. Lucky should be closed. "I've never heard anything good about it," she said. "In this neighborhood, that's the area to get shot at."
Like Mr. Lucky, the Mirabeau Room features hip-hop music, a genre that has been associated with thug violence at some venues. But not at the Mirabeau, according to Utley. "We never have any problems," she said. "Apparently we're not attracting losers who want to go shoot people."
Mike Jones, a bartender at the Mecca Café across the street, wasn't surprised at the news of the latest shootings at Mr. Lucky. "I think if you play that kind of music (hip-hop), you're going to get that kind of crowd-especially during a Sonics game," he said.
But unlike others in the neighborhood, Jones doesn't think Mr. Lucky deserves to be shut down. "I think they need more security; more security would take care of a lot that stuff," he said.
But something needs to be done about Mr. Lucky, according to Jones. "Basically what it is, is Larry's Nightclub North," he said of the Pioneer Square hip-hop club that had its liquor license suspended following several violent incidents. One of the incidents involved an attack on Seahawks player Ken Hamlin.
Jones thinks the attack on Hamlin was ultimately responsible for the suspension of Larry's liquor license. "Somebody who's not famous gets shot, it doesn't really matter," he said in reference to the mayhem at Mr. Lucky.
Larry's license wasn't yanked because of Hamlin, insisted City Attorney's Office lawyer Tamara Soukup, who has also closely monitored Mr. Lucky for some time.
Instead, she said, the emergency suspension stemmed from an incident in which a man who had been allegedly stabbed inside Larry's was taken out of the club by an owner and a bouncer, who then allegedly walked the bleeding victim down the street and left him on the corner.
Liquor Control Board agents and the City Attorney's Office recommended that Larry's liquor license be suspended, but the mayor's office made the request to the Liquor Control Board to do that, Soukup said.
Larry's had a clear pattern of violence, explained Marty McOmber, a spokesman for the mayor. But Mayor Greg Nickels is concerned about Mr. Lucky as well, McOmber added.
"The latest incident at Mr. Lucky is very disturbing," he said. "The mayor has made it clear the city is not going to tolerate public-safety problems in nightclubs."
Soukup said in a previous story that legal action against the Queen Anne club has been stymied in the past because the incidents have all taken place outside, where owner Kyrkos is not legally responsible.
She refused to speculate about whether customers getting gunned down inside the club by assailants standing outside would provide a legal hook for a license suspension. McOmber also refused to speculate about the issue. "We're looking into it," he said.
Susan Blaker, acting regional director for the liquor board, also refused to hazard an opinion. "I have not received all the police reports yet," she said on Monday this week. But the liquor board will assess all the facts before it makes a decision, Blaker added.
Mr. Lucky has generated 11 citizen and police complaints since 2004, and the club has already escaped a temporary five-day suspension order, she said.
The suspension order was based on the incident last winter in which a club bouncer was shot in the leg while trying to break up a fight in the parking lot.
Mr. Lucky was at fault because the club is the leaseholder of the parking lot area involved and because the bouncer tried to break up the fight instead of calling police, Blaker said. "He paid a fine in lieu of a suspension," she said of Kyriakos Kyrkos, the owner of Mr. Lucky.
Kyrkos did not respond to a phone call for comment from the News and has declined to speak with any other media. But he stuck a manila envelope full of open letters to the community to the front door of his business on Monday.
The letters were all gone by Tuesday morning, but KIRO-TV reported that Kyrkos blames just a few people for spoiling the Mr. Lucky scene for everyone. Kyrkos also wrote he's going to stop staging the Friday night events that have caused so much trouble in the past.[[In-content Ad]]
