The punishment is in for Banditos: Two weeks without a liquor license, starting yesterday, to go with a costly fine.
The Baltimore City Liquor Board handed the punishment down at a hearing yesterday. The three-member board had charged the Federal Hill bar and restaurant with endangering the general welfare of the public, failing to stop illegal conduct on its premises and failing to cooperate with investigators in the aftermath of a gruesome triple stabbing.
Thomas Akras, the liquor board’s deputy executive secretary, said on a phone call that the board ultimately found the bar guilty of the general welfare and illegal conduct violations, and not guilty of the charge of failing to cooperate. The board voted 3-0 for the two guilty verdicts, and 2-1 for the not guilty verdict.
The board suspended the establishment’s liquor license for two weeks and issued its owners a $6,000 fine.
Early that morning on May 13, 17-year-old Shawn Guzman allegedly stabbed three men during a bar fight, cutting himself in the process. Police arrived to find all three victims suffering from multiple stab wounds. Guzman was taken into custody after he was treated at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Prosecutors charged him with attempted murder, reckless endangerment, first-degree assault and weapons violations. His trial is set for September.
The board noted in its disposition that the night manager, James Dipino, had started cleaning up blood from the multiple stabbing before police and crime lab techs could start collecting evidence.
The bar’s owners, management and staff issued a statement two days after the violence, saying they “express our deepest sympathy to those injured and their families.”
“We are shocked and appalled by this senseless violence, which is in no way typical of the environment at Banditos or within the wonderful community of Federal Hill. In the five years since we opened, Banditos has never had an issue like this.”
The bar had been fined once before by the liquor board, in 2014, for violating a rule regarding operating hours, Akras previously said.
