Angry bar patron shoots four

Keith Paul

Monday, Dec. 27, 1999 | 11:41 a.m.

Sun reporter Jace Radke contributed to this report.

A man stormed out of the Caribbean Cabana early Sunday after he had just finished arguing with another person in the nightclub. The man disappeared into the parking lot, then re-emerged -- still angry and with a gun.

He wandered back into the bar crowded with people for a KCEP 88.1-FM fund-raiser, pulled the gun around 2:50 a.m. started shooting and then ran away, police said. Four people -- who probably never even spoke to the man -- were shot.

"Our patrons were having such a wonderful time. What kind of lunatic would run into a crowd and do something like that?" Sherman Rutledge, general manager for the public radio station, said. "It's so maddening."

What's even more maddening is that it had been barely two weeks since the last time a man got into an argument in a bar and came back with a gun.

"It's very shocking, but it's also very disappointing," said newly appointed Las Vegas City Councilman Lawrence Weekly, a volunteer talk show host at the radio station who was not the fund-raiser. "It's sad. You can go out and have fun, but you need to keep looking over your shoulder because you never know what is going to happen."

The gunman, who was not apprehended by this morning, fired into a crowd estimated at a couple of hundred people. Two of those shot where treated at area hospitals and released. But a 24-year-old Las Vegas man was listed in serious condition and a 23-year-old woman was listed in fair condition this morning at University Medical Center.

The radio station has been having weekly fund-raisers at the combination bar, restaurant and nightclub in the 3100 block of West Sahara Avenue since September, said Rutledge, who was not at the event. There is always security and people are checked for weapons, he said, but the man was able to get the gun inside.

The gunman is believed to have been in the club late Saturday and early Sunday morning when he got into an argument, Metro Police spokesman Steve Meriwether said.

The Caribbean Cabana shooting was similar to a shooting Dec. 10 outside El Potrero. In that shooting a man got into an argument inside the bar and was thrown out by security. He came back minutes later, stood outside the bar and fired several shots at a group of people standing outside, police said.

Two men standing outside El Potrero were shot and a woman sitting inside the bar was hit by a bullet that came through a window. All three survived their wounds. The gunman in that shooting also has not been apprehended.

A few days before the El Potrero shooting, six people were shot -- including an off-duty Metro officer -- inside Mr. D's sports bar on Rainbow and Oakey boulevards. In that incident, three gunman rushed in the bar in a robbery attempt.

Officer Dennis Devitte, who was off duty at the time, shot and killed one gunman -- 19-year-old Emilio Rodriguez -- in a gun battle. The two other gunmen fled and have not been apprehended. The five customers were shot by the gunmen, police said.

A coroner's inquest into the shooting is scheduled for Jan. 13.

Sunday's shooting during the radio station's fund-raiser has caused the station's management to reconsider security measures.

"We're going to buy a metal detector and take it wherever we go for fund-raisers," Rutledge said. "We're not having any more (fund-raiser parties) at Caribbean Cabana. After what happened, we can't go back. We're just hit so hard by what happened."

Weekly said he's saddened that it seems more and more people are taking arguments and turning them more and more violent.

"It just seems that the arguments just keep going and going and going," he said.