BURLINGTON — Vermont liquor control officials are investigating popular Burlington bar Nectar’s following a shooting outside the bar in February.
Police say the gun that was used in the shooting was briefly confiscated by Nectar’s security but returned to the alleged shooter before the incident.
Rashad Nashid has been charged in the shooting which left a bystander, Chelsi Parker, severely injured. Nashid had gotten into an altercation with two men inside the bar before the shooting.
Skyler Genest, the Division of Liquor Control’s director of compliance and enforcement, said the state’s investigation into what happened that night was almost complete, but he declined to get into specifics.
Genest said the division investigates one or two instances involving weapons a year. It is regularly charged with probing regulation violations and illegal activity occurring in and around licensed establishments.
These investigations examine the factors that played into the incident and the licensee’s culpability, he said.
“Did they notify authorities? Did they assist and protect the safety of their patrons? Or were they negligent, potentially, in any aspect there?” he said.
If they receive information about an assault or shooting inside of an establishment, Genest said his investigators look into what predicated the event and if there was a brawl or altercation that should have led the licensee to intervene or call law enforcement.
Depending on the findings, the Liquor and Lottery Board can impose monetary sanctions, suspend the liquor license or completely revoke it after holding a hearing on the matter. It could also require the installation of metal detectors or video surveillance, Genest said.
Nectar’s has responded to the shooting with its own changes, said Noel Donnellan, a co-owner of the bar. He said it now prohibits dangerous weapons on the premises and instituted a policy that police will be called if anyone is seen with a weapon or making threats.
There is no law at the state or federal level which bans guns from restaurants or bars.
Nashid has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and illegal possession of a firearm, as he had previously been convicted of a violent crime. He is also facing federal gun charges.
Police say that Nashid fired his weapon after getting into an altercation with two men, Dennis and Carl Martin. Parker was shot in the chest at approximately 2:11 a.m. on Feb. 26 and was taken to the UVM Medical Center.
Nashid’s altercation with the Martin brothers started inside the bar. Nectar’s bouncer Jamael Regular told police in an interview after the incident that he was informed by a patron at approximately 11:15 p.m. that two people — Nashid and Dennis Martin — were flashing guns at each other.
At approximately 11:30 p.m., Nashid gave Regular his gun, which the bouncer wrapped in plastic and placed in a back room. Dennis Martin left the bar for about 10 minutes, which Regular said led him to believe that Martin had stored his gun in a nearby car.
Regular returned the gun to Nashid at approximately midnight in an alley outside of the bar.
Police say Martin’s brother, Carl, confronted Nashid outside the club after leaving it around 2 a.m. Carl Martin then punched Nashid and pointed his own firearm at him before Nashid opened fire.
According to a police affidavit, Nashid fired two shots — the one that struck Parker and another that entered a window of a nearby apartment. Parker was in a crowd of 15 people at the time of the shooting, police say.
Nashid was apprehended a couple of blocks aways from the bar, in the area of Bank Street and South Winooski Avenue, shortly after the shooting. He is being held on $10,000 bail.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and police Chief Brandon del Pozo took the rare step of criticizing State’s Attorney Sarah George after she decided not to charge Carl Martin for his role in the incident. George’s office has argued Carl Martin acted in self defense.
Justin Jiron, the chief deputy state’s attorney, said the state considered a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment against Regular but decided that while they disagreed with his decision to return the gun to Nashid, it was not criminal behavior.
Under Vermont law, prosecutors have to prove that a person “recklessly engages in conduct which places or may place another person in danger of death or serious bodily injury” to meet the reckless endangerment charge.
Jiron said the state’s plan to call Regular as a witness in the case was a factor in the decision not to charge him, as was the amount of time that passed between Regular giving Nashid the gun back and the shooting.
“You really have to show the danger is present or very obvious at that moment, not something that could happen in the future,” he said.
Nectar’s Donnellan said that people legally carrying guns into bars was an “unfortunate reality” in Vermont and the U.S. that it is dangerous and unnecessary.
“Alcohol and guns don’t mix,” he said. “It is our sincere hope that policymakers will enact long overdue commonsense gun reform, including prohibiting firearms from all bars and clubs.”
A call to Nectar’s seeking to ask further questions — such as whether Regular was still employed there — was not immediately returned Friday.
The state does require that all sellers and servers of alcohol attend a training on the responsible sale and service of alcohol every two years, Genest said.
“That messaging of involving law enforcement any time a situation is spiraling out of control of the licensee is pervasive,” during the training, he said. “Not just limited to maybe brawls, fights or disturbances, certainly that would include any time there is a concern of weapons being present and eminent use of those weapons.”
A mass shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, earlier this month left 12 dead. Genest said the state is concerned about the seeming increase in gun-related incidents at bars in the state and around the country.
He said the division’s education division is looking at curriculum and best practices on establishment responses to active shooters and critical incidents.
Patrick Delaney, the state’s liquor and lottery commissioner, agreed that firearms and alcohol don’t mix well, but noted that the agency has to respect constitutional rights.
“We don’t really have the ability to deny people’s rights to bear arms,” he said.
Burlington voters approved three charter changes in March 2014 which would require firearms to be stored in locked areas, ban firearms in establishments with liquor licenses and allow police to confiscate weapons that pose an imminent threat to victims of domestic abuse.
But Vermont is a “Dillon’s Rule” state, which means charter changes sought by municipalities must be approved by the Legislature. Former Rep. Joanna Cole, D-Burlington, was the only member of the House Committee on Government Affairs to vote to move the changes to the full Legislature the first time it came up in 2015.
The charter change measures were tweaked and revisited in 2016 but did not advance far in the legislative process. Then-House Speaker Shap Smith said at the time that the changes conflicted with the Sportsmen’s Bill of Rights (which proponents of the new rules noted can also be changed by the Legislature).
Cole said enactment of charter changes would make incidents like the Nectar’s shooting less likely to occur. She said since there is no law restricting bringing firearms into bars, Nectar’s staff did not violate any laws by returning the gun to Nashid.
“There wasn’t a law that they were disobeying, that the police would arrest them on,” she said. “But it was definitely very dangerous for that person to walk out onto the sidewalk with that gun, it definitely wasn’t safe for society for that person to walk onto the sidewalk with that gun.”
The Nectar’s incident isn’t the first shooting outside of a bar in Burlington in recent years. In 2015, a man was shot and killed on Church Street after an altercation that started at the now-closed Zen Lounge.
The charter changes are technically still pending at the Statehouse. City Councilor Adam Roof, chair of the council’s public safety committee, said he didn’t think legislative action was likely, despite the passage of other major gun control legislation earlier this year.
“Maybe there’s a new day, but if I’m being realistic, I don’t think there a lot of appetite at the state Legislature in allowing the city of Burlington to regulate its own gun policies,” he said.
Roof, who was a bartender at Burlington bars during his early 20s, said the city has increased communication with local bars about best practices in light of the Legislature’s refusal to enact the charter changes.
Weinberger said he continue to support banning guns from bars and hopes to see action from the Legislature.
“The incident at Nectar’s demonstrated once again the risks of mixing alcohol and guns,” he said. “I would welcome and support a renewed effort in Montpelier to take legislative action to prohibit guns in bars, as many other states have done.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Nectar’s under investigation over returning gun to shooter.