Texas Strip Club Shootout with Off-Duty Police Officer, No Charges

At about 9:30 p.m., at the All Stars Gentlemen's Club parking lot in San Antonio, Texas, a barber and a police officer got into a gunfight. Both were seriously wounded. A female witness was wounded with a bullet crease to her head.

The police reported the incident was caused by road rage. That seems to be correct. The barber was cut off by the police officer. They both pulled into the parking lot. They both got out of their vehicles. Then the gunfight happened.

Initially, the story from the police was the barber opened up on the police officer, who was shot six times, but managed to crawl back to his vehicle, obtain a firearm, and return fire, wounding the barber and the witness. The barber and the officer both ended up in the hospital, and both survived. From foxsanantonio.com:

UPDATE: Investigators say the off-duty officer, the suspect and the injured passenger are expected to survive, although the officer remained in critical condition. They are all being treated at University Hospital. The officer and the suspect underwent surgery early Wednesday morning.

There was more to the case. The barber, Demontae Walker, was from Chicago and had opened a barbershop in San Antonio. He had no criminal history. His father's name is Desmond. From mysanantonio.com:

Desmond Walker, a 47-year-old machine operator in west Chicago, is left trying to reconcile the police department's account of his son's actions and his own knowledge of his son.

No indictment of anyone, according to the story. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

You expect sense?

From what I read, I might have expected the officer to be indicted for something. But neither of the accounts (the officers or the barbers) add up completely.

It does not make sense that the officer went back to his car and got a firearm. The physical evidence does not support it.

On the other hand, the barber says the officer pulled a gun, then he shot the officer in the legs. Then he went into his car to make the 911 phone call, leaving the officer, with the officers gun, only wounded in the legs.

No one disputes that the officer, wounded, shot several shots through the car's side window, wounding the barber and the witness (barber's wife's cousin)

"The barber was cut off by the police officer."

Oh, someone committed the infraction of cutting off again. I'm not blaming the author at all, because that was apparently part of the story.

And that's what I find so strange about it. The phrase, cut off, is so popular, but it doesn't have anything to do with traffic laws. In each instance, one driver or the other failed to yield the right of way.

Good post, by the way. Don't drink and carry...or drive. And a wise person will avoid pride and getting mad. Let the crazies kill each other.

"...then he shot the officer in the legs."

That was so nice. ;-)

Back in the early '90s, I knew a cop who lived by that...well, almost. He said that if he ever had to shoot someone, that he'd shoot them in the leg. I didn't know whether or not he was joking. He was easy to like, because he was funny anyway.

A few months later, he shot a gangster wanna-be in the butt. I still didn't know if he was serious about what he said, though, because he returned fire in defense with his concealed .380, just outside of a bar.

He blew under the limit and was determined to be sober. [He was a nerd.] .380s were most often the cheap kind back then and notorious for firing a little low. Most men tended to fire low in night fire anyway.

And that's what I find so strange about it. The phrase, cut off, is so popular, but it doesn't have anything to do with traffic laws. In each instance, one driver or the other failed to yield the right of way.

In research for the story, the barber was about to enter an off ramp to go to the strip club.

Then the officer, at a very high rate of speed, passed the barber, cut in front of him, and braked aggressivelly for the off ramp. The barber hit his brakes to avoid a collision, and ended up stopped at the far edge of the off-ramp entrance.

That is the version the barber gave, and I presume, his wife's cousin, who was in the car with him.

The officer had just consumed five mixed drinks in quick succession, before the automobile-off-ramp incident. There is no dispute about that.

.380s were most often the cheap kind back then and notorious for firing a little low.

Lots of high quality .380 pistols in the 90's. Walthers, Brownings, Colts.

But hard to say what an officer was carrying. Most do not carry junk.

So Demontae Lashaun (the name is clearly relevant to what happened) came down to Texas from shoot’em up Chicago, was disrespected by a drunk, and shot him six times. The wounded drunk then returned the favor. Now, the drunk cop’s name would also be useful, since it was San Antonio, odds are he’s Mexican. If so, the above summary needs a ‘search and replace’ to replace the word “drunk” with “drunk Mexican driver”.

The only other thing missing from the story is ‘aspiring rap singer’. Maybe LaShaun doesn’t sing.

"Lots of high quality .380 pistols in the 90's. Walthers, Brownings, Colts.

But hard to say what an officer was carrying. Most do not carry junk."

Back then, many police had only started to carry semi-autos for duty weapons (open carry), and quite a few of the older ones still carried revolvers. Very few people had heard or seen anything about the Internet.

Many still carried smaller revolvers concealed, when they were off-duty. It was too fast and easy for some of the firearms dealers to sell semi-autos that were very popular with many of their non-police customers at the time: Saturday night specials.

People who wanted to try something new either needed to study or were at the mercy of the dealers (the experts, heh). I was only trying a new semi-auto then (a Glock). Revolvers were more familiar, and .38s still seemed to make more sense to me than .380s.

"Then the officer, at a very high rate of speed, passed the barber, cut in front of him, and braked aggressivelly for the off ramp. The barber hit his brakes to avoid a collision, and ended up stopped at the far edge of the off-ramp entrance."

If that's true, the officer was probably speeding, driving recklessly and probably more (depending on statutes there). Hypothetically, of course, because I wasn't there. What a mess. It's better to avoid hotheads whenever possible.

What a mess. It's better to avoid hotheads whenever possible.

Absolutely. The barber should never have got out of the car, IMHO. But, he had a reason to be there. He was dropping off the wife's cousin to her job.

No knowing the geometry of the layout at the time, I don't know exactly what choices he had.

The officer's name was Dezi Rios.

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