KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The 9ine Ultra Lounge may not be open much longer.
A second shooting at the club this year won’t go over well at a license revocation hearing in front of the Liquor Control Board.
But Sunday’s shooting that injured four people didn’t have to happen for 9ine Ultra Lounge to be in trouble. A shooting in January, police reports outlining other types of violence and probation violations are enough for Jim Ready, director of KCMO Regulated Industries, to ask for its liquor license to be pulled.
Although Ready notified owner Alphonso Hodge of his request for a hearing in a letter dated Aug. 21, that hearing didn’t happen soon enough to prevent Sunday’s shooting.
Video of the mall parking lot where the 9ine Ultra Lounge is located on Noland Road near 40 Highway shows the shooting Sunday around 2 a.m. when four people were shot. Police said the shooting stemmed from an earlier argument inside the bar.
Kansas City’s Regulated Industries, which requested a hearing to revoke the bar’s liquor license a week before this shooting, said the violence wouldn’t have happened if not for the 9ine.
“Pay attention to details there,” Ready said. “One business was open. It was one crowd from one business. It’s clear who’s responsible.”
But Hodge said his bar was closed, he was on his way home and has a video to prove it wasn’t his fault.
Hodge gave FOX4 a video that he said shows police pulling up in front of his club to an empty parking lot at 2:27 a.m. Sunday. You can hear people screaming for help and a police officer saying, “Hey, they are way over there.”
It’s proof, Hodge said, that the shooting was not his fault or his club’s.
“There’s a lot going on in Kansas City right now for some reason,” Hodge told FOX4 by phone Sunday. “Not only at the 9ine, it’s every day in Kansas City, you know? It just happened to happen there last night after hours.”
They’re excuses, Ready said, that infuriate him.
“You know, you had a shooting there in January, come on! Come on! It’s up to you to make sure that people leave,” Ready said.
This year, a total of 19 people have been injured in two shootings near the 9ine Ultra Lounge. Four were injured Sunday and 15 were hurt in January when a young woman and the shooter were killed.
“This is your business. These are your people. You are responsible for them,” Ready said. “It’s not enough for you to say in January, ‘Well that shooting happened outside then.’ What were they here for? For your club. So this last Saturday, what were they there for? Your club.”
Ready said the weekend before the second shooting, he sent some of his people to the 9ine to see if it was following the law. His investigators reported they found the bar open, letting people in and serving booze after its 1:30 closing time.
Ready hopes to have the revocation hearing in the next two weeks to shut the bar down.
