Chaos erupts when proprietor confronts customers

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Proprietors at reputable nightspots take seriously their responsibility to monitor the amount of alcohol they serve their customers, and refuse to ignore rules established by state regulatory agencies. But a Gonzales businessman was brutally beaten then airlifted to San Antonio when his attempt to enforce the rules erupted into TOTAL CHAOS

2 arrested, 1 ends up in ICU when brawl becomes ‘the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen in my life'

Those who know him best describe Kenny Rogers (no, not the singer) as “a real passive guy, a real nice guy,” someone who tries to diffuse and calm down a situation, even when dealing with people who have been drinking and may not be thinking clearly. As his brother Ray observes, “he tries to see the good in everybody.”

At 5-7 and weighing slightly more than 100 lbs., Kenny is built more for being a jockey than a barroom bouncer, although Ray says his older brother is really tough.

When Ray left to run a quick errand Saturday night, it wasn’t unusual that he left Kenny in charge at the Silver Star Saloon.

But before the night was over, Kenny was unconscious after enduring a severe beating and was airlifted to a San Antonio hospital where he was in ICU before surgeons reconstructed his face on Monday. He now faces 6-8 weeks of recovery. “He doesn’t really look like himself,” Ray says. “The way he looked [Saturday night] was just horrible.”

All because Kenny tried to enforce the rules established by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) and the Gonzales bar itself.

Five days after the incident that nearly cost his brother his life, Ray was still trying to understand why the business he opened in October 2012 continues to be plagued by those who refuse to allow the Silver Star Saloon to enjoy the kind of relaxing environment he had envisioned.

“That sends a bad reputation to me and my bar, when really it’s the few bad apples that come in here and disrupt the rest of us,” Ray says.

“It shouldn’t be like that. I was told to move out here, that this was a great town, and that it was an up-and-coming, booming town,” Ray explains about his decision to become a business owner on St. Paul Street just north of downtown Gonzales. “I asked someone, ‘Where should I put a business at?’ and they told me Gonzales, Texas. They said it’s a real nice town; it’s growing, they need businesses to come in to help it grow.

“So I come here thinking this is that nice, quiet town, but it seems like everybody in my family, including my own mother, has taken punches to the face over us just trying to run a legitimate business. It’s starting to get a little scary, but I’m not going to back down from it.”

But citing postings on the Internet and on social media networks, Ray says support for Kenny has been overwhelming. “I know that the local community supports us, there’s just that group of people that don’t.”

Arrests are made

In the aftermath of Saturday night’s brawl, two men were arrested, and Ray and his family wondered if Kenny would ever be the same.

Kenny was taken to Gonzales Memorial Hospital in critical condition – “severe critical condition,” Ray says – with severe head trauma. He was then airlifted to San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC), “which is the No. 1 head trauma [center] in the world,” Ray points out. According to Ray, Kenny’s injuries included brain hemorrhaging; broken bones throughout his face, including his cheekbone, jawbone and eye socket; multiple cuts to his head; and bruises to much of his body. There was initial concern about at least partial paralysis.

“An officer contacted my mother [advising] that it wasn’t a good situation, that it didn’t look good for [Kenny],” Ray said as officials prepared the family in the event Kenny’s injuries were more severe than initially diagnosed.

Gonzales police Capt. Allen Taylor confirmed that the men arrested and charged with disorderly conduct (a Class C misdemeanor) were Alvin Brister III, 36, and Jeremy Kintz, 39, both of Gonzales, although Ray doesn’t understand why Kintz was arrested since his involvement was reportedly only as one coming to Kenny’s rescue. Both Brister and Kintz were arraigned and released from the Gonzales County Jail Sunday, and both are due to appear in municipal court.

According to Taylor, police are still investigating the incident. The names of others involved in the brawl were not released.

Reliving the brawl

In recreating the incident that came to a head just before 9 p.m. Saturday, Ray recalled that there was a group of four people at a table – “one guy who was 18, his uncle (Brister) and the 18-year-old’s mother,” and a woman Ray later identified as the 18-year-old’s girlfriend. Ray said 18-year-old customers are allowed when accompanied by a parent, but because the last names for the mother and son were different, bartenders could not allow the son to consume alcoholic beverages.

[Ray said it’s legal for an 18-year-old to drink alcohol if accompanied by a parent, “but the bar policy goes above that.” A bartender can serve alcohol to the parent, who can then give to their minor child, but because the last names were different, Ray and his staff could not confirm their relationship.]

Ray said one of his bartenders reported that Brister “was kinda rude” when ordering a drink, and that after about an hour, Ray made the decision to stop serving alcoholic beverages to those at the table. He said Kenny subsequently witnessed the 18-year-old drinking a beer, which he took away from him. Ray noted that the TABC holds proprietors responsible for intoxicated patrons.

“They wanted more drinks, they kept asking for more, we said no,” Ray said. “I think they were just mad because I told the bartenders not to serve them anymore. That’s where it all started.”

Shortly after making the decision, Ray, 28, left the saloon to make a quick purchase, leaving Kenny, 30, to enforce the discontinuation of service to the table.

That’s when the wheels came off.

Ray had gotten only a couple of blocks away from the saloon when he received a phone call informing him that the situation had escalated, so Ray returned to the bar immediately.

No one has been able to say who threw the first punch, but Ray alleges that it was Brister.

“When I came back in, I saw my brother having his head bashed in and two women beating up my sister,” Ray recalls. “I ran straight to my brother, I grabbed him. His face was already black and purple, and I was gone maybe three minutes. He can’t open one eye, it’s cavin’ in on the side of his face. So I grabbed him and started takin’ him outta there. The guy who was beating him up comes after me for tryin’ to help him and starts hittin’ me.”

After getting Kenny out of harm’s way, Ray said “I run to my sister, I grab her and pull her away from the two girls who were on top of her, who were also at that table. One of ‘em was the mother of the 18-year-old, and the other was the girlfriend of the 18-year-old, and they were both beating up my sister (who had gone to assist Kenny when the situation escalated to physical violence). She’s a little girl, she doesn’t weigh over 100 lbs. I’ve never seen her in a fight, she doesn’t even know how to fight. She’s just not that kinda person. She just saw my brother getting beat up and tried to help and got entangled in the mess.

“Finally a couple of innocent bystanders that were getting hit by these women stepped in and started trying to help us. One man stepped in and he was literally trying to break the fight up – I never once saw him throw a punch,” Ray recalls, saying the man tried to escort Brister to the door, at which point Brister allegedly punched Ray’s brother-in-law. “That’s when that man’s sister – the one that was beating up my sister – came and started hitting him in the face.” Ray reported that the bystander’s wife was also hit in the face.

“It was just total chaos,” Ray says. “All my customers are trying to help us out, and this group is just goin’ crazy.”

Ray, who is 5-9, 150 lbs., speculated that Brister and the 18-year-old were both over 6 feet tall and both weighed more than 220 lbs.

“All we did was to ask for a minor not to drink in the bar. We told them we couldn’t serve them any more alcohol because we didn’t want to risk them getting intoxicated and starting a fight. Well, they started a fight anyway.”

Ray said Kenny was unconscious after the first punch, and when he entered the bar, he witnessed his brother being pummeled with a high-ball glass (a heavy-bottomed glass), which he says broke on the third hit. “It’s not anything you want to see happening.”

After police and sheriff’s deputies restored order, Ray says one of the customers told him “that was probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen in my life. Anyone that does what those men did to your brother, that is just a hateful act. All your brother did was walk up real politely and ask the minor not to drink.”

Kenny was transported by ambulance to the hospital, while Ray and his mother took 20-year-old Sara to the hospital.

Ray says he will seek a criminal trespass notice for those at the table, which prohibits them from returning to the Silver Star Saloon and subjects them to arrest should they return. He says additional charges may also be filed.

A puzzled prisoner

Almost lost in the confusion is the contention by both Ray and Kintz that police arrested someone that maintain was an innocent bystander.

“I still don’t understand why he was arrested,” Ray said of his friend, Kintz, who he had called earlier inviting him to join him at the bar for a drink, unaware that he would walk in in the middle of a melee. “I was standing pretty close to him; I didn’t see him doing anything or saying anything. I still don’t understand what that was about.”

Kintz is equally perplexed.

“I don’t even think I walked 10 feet in the door and, bam, I was in trouble, just like that. It happened so quickly,” he maintains.

“Somebody’s swinging this [high-ball glass] at Kenny, so I jump into the whole middle of it. I still hadn’t had a drink, still hadn’t done nothing. I see my friend getting hit with a [glass], so I get in the middle of it. It happened at the exact same time I showed up.”

Kintz says he was arrested and handcuffed, then charges that the arresting officer put him in a headlock and “shocked me with a stun gun in the chest” several times, “and that was unnecessary.” As he’s being arrested and placed in a squad car, Kintz says he was still trying to find out why he was being arrested.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, why are you putting me in jail? I just went in to try to save this dude’s life. I put myself between him and the guy who was raisin’ his hands’.”

For Kintz, no good deed goes unpunished.

Kintz says his “participation” happened, in his mind, within 20-30 seconds from the time he walked in the door, intervened and was arrested. “It all happened so fast.”

Kintz doesn’t know how many times he was hit during the fracas, but he was left with a laceration on his face and a chipped tooth.

As bewildered as he is about how his role as would-be savior went so wrong, Kintz empathizes with the trouble Ray and his family have encountered in just three short months.

“Those people came down here as a family and they work with each other and they love each other and they don’t worry about all the crap that goes on in Gonzales. Those people are great people. They came here with nothing else but good intentions to make a little bit of money off the oilfield here. But it’s been nothing but misery [for them].”

Why the disturbances?

So why does this happen at the Silver Star Saloon?

“I think it’s because we’re the new bar, it’s the popular bar, everyone wants to be here,” Ray speculates. “Every fight we’ve ever had in here has been [because of] old grudges throughout the town that come in here – you have this family over here that doesn’t like this family and they’re sitting here at the bar and you see throughout the night they’re getting closer and closer together then all of a sudden something happens; an argument breaks out.

“As for those two incidents [a Nov. 11 “knife fight” and the Dec. 29 brawl], both had to do with people not wanting to follow the rules of a business,” Ray explains. “[In the Dec. 29 incident] you have a kid that sits there and swears up and down at the door that he’s not going to drink, then we catch him drinking. We say something to him and they get mad, they don’t want to follow the rules. The uncle wanted more beer, we didn’t want to serve that table any more beer because we felt like they’d had enough. They didn’t want to follow those rules, so they got mad at that, too. That’s two rules that they’re sitting there not wanting to abide by. We’re performing the services that they want, but yet there’s a point when we can’t provide that service anymore because we are dealing with alcohol. This is liquor and beer. There’s a cutoff point. They didn’t want to follow those rules. They got unruly. They swung first.

“There’s always going to be those kind of people.”

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