The southeast Denver nightclub where a 25-year-old man was killed and eight other people were shot a week ago will not reopen after the violence, the club’s owner said Monday.
Read more PHOTOS: Blucifer’s First Rodeo and The Underground Music Showcase take over Denver for a weekend
City licensing officials last week moved to shut down Ultra Lounge East, at 9755 E. Hampden Ave., after the July 20 mass shooting at the club, alleging that the property has seen three violent events in the past five months and that its owner, Dionte Wilkins, did not hold the proper licenses to run the establishment. The city’s Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection on Wednesday ordered Ultra Lounge East to close immediately.
Wilkins on Monday said he would not seek to reopen the club. He spoke during a press conference at Brother Jeff’s Cultural Center on Welton Street, where a number of anti-violence advocates and community members gathered to address the mass shooting and call for an end to such violence.
Wilkins said that he was at the club when the shooting happened just after midnight on July 20, and that he ran for cover “just like everyone else did.”
“It was a crazy scene, out-of-nowhere situation,” he said, joining with several other speakers to call for gun violence to stop, particularly in Denver’s Black community.
Denver police believe that at least two shooters fired 66 shots during the shooting at the club, and that the violence was a continuation of a dispute that began earlier in the day during an event in Aurora that was billed as a community water fight with games, food and giveaways. Aurora police responded to that event at Del Mar Park around 7 p.m. for several fights. They issued three summonses and made one arrest.
Read more Alex Marrero to stay on as Denver superintendent after lengthy school board meeting
That earlier conflict reignited at Ultra Lounge East, where Wilkins hosted an afterparty for the community water fight, investigators believe. Denver police have not announced any arrests in the shooting.
“Which means that there is someone in our community that has perpetrated the unbelievable, very heinous act of violence in our community,” Brother Jeff Fard said Monday. “No one goes to a venue expecting that they’re not going to come home, or that they’re going to be hurt or injured.”
The shooting at the club came amid a jump in violence along that stretch of E. Hampden Avenue, which has experienced five homicides, including a 47-year-old man who was beaten to death outside the club in March, and 11 people shot in the past seven months.
Lawrence Goshon, a violence prevention specialist at Denver Youth Program, said no one should bring a gun to a nightclub. He called on community members to tone down threatening talk.
“If one person takes their gun to the club, it makes everybody feel unsafe,” he said. “So that makes another person take their gun to the club. If you’re saying you’re gonna shoot if you see somebody, that means everybody else is going to be ready to shoot. So it’s not just about the shooters — it is about the words we use, too.”
Read more Denver man sentenced to 40 years in prison for role in fatal gas station shooting
Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.
