A neighbor down the street from a reported after-hours strip club said he called Detroit police and warned them of violence a day before three people were shot dead and four injured during a mass shooting at the location.
Per usual, he'd been drinking his early morning coffee on the porch on Sept. 26. The party was still going strong at the after-hours spot on Prest Avenue on Detroit's west side — possibly a little too strong, considering he saw people fighting in the street and yelling nearly incoherently above one another, he said.
The neighbor called the cops after he heard threats such as "I'm going to kill you" and "I'm going to f--- you up."
"I said 'it sounds like it's about to escalate to violence.' That is literally what I told them,"
he said. The Free Press agreed not to name the neighbor because he fears retaliation.
"But I guess because there wasn't gunshots then, they didn't take it seriously," he said.
Police drove by the after-hours spot and never left the vehicle, he said, and "it didn't even appear to slow down, to be honest. It just kept driving."
Seven injured in Detroit mass shooting
The next day, a fight led to a shooting with seven victims, three fatal. Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison said police got the call at around 7:22 a.m. and officers responded to the scene within four minutes.
"The chief was very, I don't know, kind of boasting about the response time, but it's like, you got there in four minutes to see the bodies," the neighbor continued.
"That's great, you got there quick, but isn't the goal to stop it before it happens?"
The neighbor said he knows not to walk his dog past the illicit strip club in the mornings — music would still be blasting at 6 a.m.
Other neighbors know not to let their children go down that block of Prest, he said. Several of them have called numerous times, he continued — Bettison even acknowledged that the police themselves know about the spot, citing seven calls there earlier this year.
Community group offers help
Neek Allen of the community violence intervention (CVI) group Detroit 300 tapped into the streets and told the Free Press that based on what he's heard, the fight-turned-mass shooting started with two women arguing over a cell phone. Then men got involved. And then guns came into play.
Allen's good friend, known as "Ansar," was killed in the shooting, he said.
"He was a good friend of mine, one of my guys. I'm talking about somebody who helped steer me in the right direction at one point in my life," he said. In the aftermath, Allen said that he and Detroit 300 are focusing on addressing trauma in the neighborhood, including helping people with mental health referrals and strengthening the neighborhood by teaching community members how to start a block club.
Allen also said the illicit spot has been running for two decades as "an after-hours/strip club/gambler house/whatever else."
It's unclear how the club continued to operate despite being known to police. Detroit police did not immediately respond to a Free Press inquiry about it.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at asahouri@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Neighbor warned Detroit police of violence before strip club shooting
