The city of Gary has closed a lounge in which one person was shot and killed and three others wounded over the weekend.
The city will also decide whether Up Top Lounge’s business license will be suspended or revoked, city spokesman Michael Gonzales said in an email Tuesday. City administrators notified its owners late Tuesday afternoon, he said.
The bar’s owners, according to the Indiana Secretary of State Office’s website, are Julia Barnhardt and Tara Latimore. Neither responded to requests for comment on the bar’s closing.
Gary Police were first called at around 2:30 a.m. July 8 to Up Top Lounge in the 900 block of 21st Avenue for a man dead of gunshot wounds, Gary Police Spokesman Capt. Sam Roberts said in an email. Officers upon arrival found the deceased as well as two men and one woman who had been shot, Roberts said.
The three victims were taken to a hospital, Roberts said. The Lake County Coroner’s office on Tuesday identified the man who was killed as Troy Allen, 37, of Gary.
Gary Mayor Jerome Prince said that the administration is “frustrated and angry” that a handful of people in the city “choose to behave violently toward others.”
“We will not allow the cowardly actions of a small number of people deter us from our mission to make Gary a safer place to live, play and work,” Prince said in a statement Monday. “The Gary Police and Lake County Prosecutor’s Homicide Task Force will meet with the owners of the lounge to determine the best ways to keep these actions from occurring again.”
Officers believe the shooter fired inside and outside the bar, Roberts said. Anyone with information is asked to call 219-881-1210.
Up Top Lounge is the second bar the city has moved to close in the span of a year. Six people were shot, two of them fatally, when as many as 50 gunshots rang out during a performance at Playo’s Night Club on Grant Street in June 2022, the Post-Tribune previously reported.
Playo’s submitted a safety plan in August obtained by the Post-Tribune, and its goal was “to assist with maintaining a safe establishment, free from illegal activity including drug sales, underage drinking, overconsumption of alcohol and violence.” Staff was to be trained constantly to “understand their responsibilities,” including “when and how to notify law enforcement and senior management” when they see something suspicious and to call 911 for emergencies or crimes, according to the plan.
A minimum of one trained security guard for every 50 patrons also would be provided, the document reads, and the club was to have “installed a Token Works Scanning Machine” to ensure an ID’s validity as well as allow club management to log problematic patrons on a “banned list database.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
