A deeper look at deadly Lavish Lounge shooting as courts close club, feds take over probe

What happened at Lavish Lounge in Greenville before dawn that summer day was later described by an investigator as something "out of a horror movie."

Foogiano, a Georgia-based rapper whose real name is Kwame Brown, was at the nightclub for an Independence Day show that started after dark.

The deadly violence that erupted a short time later is under investigation in a probe now being led by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Agency officials say their expertise in ballistics and tracking guns may be crucial to a break in the case.

The Greenville News sought public records to learn more about the history of the club and the investigation into one of the largest shootings in the county in years, an act of violence that left two people dead and eight others wounded by gunfire. Records from a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigative file and a separate trove of incident reports from the Greenville County Sheriff's Office display Lavish Lounge, which is now closed, as a nightclub with a history of incidents that drew heavy law enforcement response, but whose incidents many times didn't end with anyone being criminally charged. The records show the nightclub was open illegally during South Carolina's  lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic — and the consequences were dire.

The club manager, Carlos Quiroga, initially followed Gov. Henry McMaster's coronavirus emergency orders, including state restrictions in March and April that deemed  nightclubs "nonessential" businesses that must be closed to the public.

But eventually, Quiroga was worried about bills he had to pay. He saw some businesses opening and assumed he could reopen, according to court records included in the SLED investigative file.  

Quiroga did not return a voicemail left at his publicly listed cell phone number, another message left at a business phone number, or a Facebook message seeking comment about his decision to reopen Lavish Lounge and what happened during the shooting. He has not been criminally charged in this case.

Quiroga made a deal before Independence Day to rent the nightclub space to a promoter for $1,500. Under the terms of their arrangement, Quiroga said, the promoter would provide an artist and would get the proceeds of selling show tickets, which cost $40 to $60 apiece, and the club would get the money from alcohol sales.

There was at least one other stipulation of the agreement between the club and the promoter: The club would provide security guards and metal detectors for the event, but "the artist and his bags would not be touched by security."

According to records, Quiroga didn't do any research before reopening the club or check to see if he needed special permission. But he did open it.

And so, as July 4 faded into the early hours of July 5, more than 200 people were inside Lavish Lounge, which is on White Horse Road near Interstate 85. Quiroga was working at one of the bars at the club selling alcohol.

As a beat pulsed through the club, a few people wore masks, but there was no talk of COVID-19 restrictions. Operating the way it was, Lavish Lounge was violating them.

Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis said video footage from the club showed what are believed to be gang-related hand signals that “instigated this altercation in front of the stage, which then led to a gun being pulled, which then led to multiple guns.”

The first  shot was fired at 1:46 a.m., and Mykala Bell was near the stage. She was just about to move into a new apartment and was celebrating that with a holiday-weekend  night out, according to her aunt, Barbara Jenkins. She had nothing to do with the gang signs or the shooting and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the sheriff said. Bell, 23, was  fatally shot in the crowd. She leaves behind two children, the oldest of which is 2.

Clarence Sterling Johnson Jr. of Duncan was working security at the club. He was armed, but never fired his gun, according to Lewis. Johnson, 51, also was mortally wounded. He leaves behind four children and two grandchildren.

More:Duncan security guard who died in Greenville nightclub shooting remembered as kind ‘servant’

Many other people were injured, too, not by gunfire, but in the chaos of trying to get out of the club once the violence began, according to SLED.

When the gunfire was over, what was left was one of the county's largest crime scenes — marked by broken glass, bloody shoes and lives cut short.

While one man, Jarquez Kezavion Cooper of Athens, Georgia, was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder days after the shooting, authorities are still looking for three others who they want to question in the case. The men are believed to have ties to the Atlanta area.

Lewis has said that the men are believed to be part of the "entourage," of Foogiano.

A man who answered a call Friday to the phone number listed on the rapper's public Facebook page hung up after a reporter from The Greenville News identified herself. The rapper also did not respond to a separate message left at a business phone number.

Foogiano maintained his innocence in a video posted to Instagram soon after the shooting. Lewis has said investigators do not believe he was directly involved in the shooting. The people investigators want to question used a back entrance to the club that was reserved for the rapper and the people connected to him and while patrons who went through the front door were searched for weapons. Not everyone who went through the back door was checked, Lewis said.

"They should have had more security there that night," Lewis said Friday. "They shouldn't have even been open."

ATF has taken over the investigation and agency officials say their expertise in ballistics and tracking guns may be crucial to a break in the case.

Lewis said in an interview Friday that the ATF had taken over the investigation "because everything crossed state lines." The Sheriff's Office in a follow up email also said the ATF was leading the investigation because of the number of potential gun charges and that federal penalties associated with them stiffer. Sheriff's Office investigators remain in contact with the ATF, Lewis said.

Legislator: Greenville County Sheriff's Office could have prevented Lavish Lounge shooting

Corey Ray, a spokesman for the ATF, said in a recent interview with The News that it is "likely the scale of the crime" that caused the federal agency to take over the  investigation of the nightclub shooting.

"When we heard the number of people who were killed and violently injured, this certainly got our attention," Ray said.

He said that while the ATF often works in unison with local authorities, the agency's expertise in decoding shell casings and in tracing firearms are likely at the center of why it is leading the nightclub investigation now.

"Our expertise ... enables us to act on any leads very quickly," he said.

Deputies went to Lavish more than 20 times in 18 months

Less than a week after the shooting, SLED agent Dena Metzler met with Quiroga and issued him a citation for "permitting any act on the premises which tends to create a public nuisance or constitute a crime." According to the agent's report, the business operating in violation of the governor's executive order was a "direct threat to the public health, safety and welfare." 

"Mr. Quiroga understood the reason for the violation and apologized for the activity observed July 4, 2020," Metzler wrote in a SLED investigative report.

The shooting was not the first time trouble had come to the nightclub.

Greenville County Sheriff's Office Capt. Dallas Gladson, who has been with the agency for nearly 20 years, said in an affidavit included in the SLED file that deputies had been repeatedly called to the nightclub, even before the fatal shooting.

What we know:Lavish Lounge, the site of deadly SC nightclub shooting

"As a result of the duties of my position, I am aware that Greenville County Sheriff's deputies have responded to the location over 20 times since the since the start of 2019," he said in a July 8 affidavit filed after the shooting. "Despite efforts by the sheriff and/or his deputies in conversations with the club ownership/management to take steps to curtail the criminal activity on the premises, the number of situations requiring response by law enforcement has remained excessive.  Due to the nature of the calls and the reputation of the club, each law enforcement response tends to require multiple officers at the scene, thereby providing an ongoing, unreasonable strain upon the resources of Greenville County Sheriff's Office."

In Gladson's affidavit, he listed 14 specific instances since March 31, 2019, which required law enforcement to go the club. The last one, the fatal shooting, is the one he described as "out of a horror movie."

The incidents included four reports of weapons being fired at the club, all before the deadly violence. Two of the four weapons calls came in February of this year, and another happened June 14, less than a month before the deadly shooting.

In a two-month period between late 2019 and early this year, officers also responded to three calls about assaults at the club, including one Nov. 23, 2019, that led to the dispatching of 10 deputies.

Through a separate Freedom of Information request to the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, The News obtained additional incident reports from 2019 through the middle of 2020 detailing the number of times deputies went to Lavish Lounge. 

More:Neighbors uneasy after 10 shot, 2 killed at Greenville nightclub during violent weekend

More than a dozen incident reports were tied to the club during that period, but multiple cases were closed with no charges being filed. 

The reasons were varied: Complainants stopped answering phone calls from deputies. Or there was no video available to show what happened. Several times, officers made note that they had trouble getting cooperation from people who attended club events, or that club employees had tried to dissuade them from looking into incidents.

For example, on March 23, 2019,  deputies responded to an assault call involving two women. One said she was hit in the head with a "large bottle of alcohol" and the other said she was hit in the head with an ice bucket. No one was charged because there wasn't a witness to say who started it, according to the incident report.

On  Nov. 19, 2019, a woman who worked at Lavish met a deputy at a nearby fast food restaurant to report that she had been assaulted while working at the club. She said two men came up behind her while she was standing at the bar, kicked her in the leg and "almost kicked her head off." At least one of the men threatened to "beat the victim's a-- for real," according to the incident report.

"The victim advised that she did not want law enforcement to go to the club, as it would get her in trouble with her employer," a deputy wrote in the incident report. "I asked for the number for club security, to make contact and find out what the guard had seen." The woman gave the deputy a phone number for the head of club security, but told the officer that the guard would be" reluctant to offer information about the incident," according to an incident report.

More:At vigil, community leaders cry out against 'senseless violence' at nightclub shooting

When the deputy spoke with a person involved in the club's security, the worker told the deputy that he had seen the woman and the two men on the ground "swinging at each other."

"He stated they broke up the altercation very quickly and that there was no need for law enforcement involvement in this matter," the deputy wrote in an incident report.

Three days later, the woman withdrew her assault complaint.

And on the date of the fight that drew a response from 10 deputies, there was a separate complaint from a a woman who said her husband had thrown a drink at her.  That Nov. 23, 2019 incident report includes this:

"Apparently before I arrived on scene there was a large fight among several people and Deputies called for emergency assistance," a deputy wrote. "As deputies arrived on scene everyone began leaving the club. Everyone I encountered was uncooperative and said they did not see anything." 

The woman who complained about having a drink thrown at her was told "there would be no charges from this latest incident due to a lack of evidence," the deputy wrote.

Additional  records in the SLED investigative file show that deputies responded to Lavish Lounge at least five times without filing incident reports to show they had been there. The reasons they didn't file reports varied: Sometimes the incident was resolved before officers arrived, sometimes the offenders left before deputies got there, and sometimes, whomever placed a call for help no longer wanted it from law enforcement.

"While I can only speak for the time I have been in office, I can tell you that our deputies and investigators look into each case with the same thorough approach," Lewis said in an email Friday. "Each case has its own challenges, and our deputies must take all of the evidence and circumstances into consideration when determining whether or not probable cause exists to make a charge. If deputies don't have cooperation or sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant against an offender, we must follow what the law says. In the cases where deputies  find probable cause exists and have the correlating evidence to back that up, charges are made."

He said the agency's Community Action Team "works diligently" handling complaints about bars, businesses, and "problem areas" not following the law. He said the Sheriff's Office relies on community tips to help address issues.

"My heart goes out to everyone affected by that tragic event and while we wish this never happened, unfortunately, there is evil out there and when bad people are bent on commit(ing) evil acts against others, there's nothing to totally stop that from happening," Lewis said Friday. "I will say we are committed to  ensuring our community is safe and are steadfast in our mission to do whatever we can, while abiding by the laws and policies, to ensure that happens."

Lavish Lounge shuttered; key licenses revoked after October ruling

While Lavish Lounge's licenses and permits for operations were suspended shortly after the July 5 shooting, they were not revoked until Oct. 8.

"Due to the repeated acts of unlawfulness committed upon Respondent's premises and its continued unwillingness or inability to provide security or otherwise control its patrons as well as its refusal to comply with (an) executive order ... during a pandemic, I find that Respondent's permit and license should be revoked," Judge Ralph King "Tripp" Anderson III wrote.

The club remains shuttered. And the search for other people connected to this case remains active.

Sterling Johnson, son of the slain club security guard, made a public plea earlier this year for them to turn themselves in for questioning, to "get this road to justice started."

"We know who you are," he said. "We know what you look like."

Bell's family, meanwhile, is coping with the young woman's death, "day by day, and sometimes, when it's really hard, hour by hour," her aunt, Jenkins, said.

"She loved her children more than anything, more than life," Jenkins said. "She was doing everything she could as a mother to make sure they would have a good life and a good future. It's just tragic that she was so sadly — and so unfairly — taken from them too soon."