A DC hip-hop hang out and eatery has been shut down by the city.
DC Chief of Police, Cathy Lanier, ordered 1920dc and adjacent Asefu's Restaurant closed following a fatal early Saturday morning shooting. Lanier cites the public's safety as her motivation for closing down the privately owned establishments.
Both locations are jointly owned and had already been temporarily shut down by her order immediately following the shooting. The owners can request a public hearing to regain their liquor license after the order expires. Chief Lanier has the authority to temporarily close any establishment that serves alcohol for up to 96 hours thanks to the Emergency Suspension of Liquor Licenses Act of 2005.
It states:
“The Chief of Police finds that continued operation of this establishment would present an imminent danger to the health, safety, and welfare of the public; that there is an additional imminent danger to the health and welfare of the public by not closing this establishment; and that there is no immediately available measure to ameliorate these findings.”
There are conflicting reports as to what exactly happened, but law enforcement officials state that Alexandria, VA resident, Joseph Hardin, 30, was shot around 1:15 a.m. Saturday outside the club by Cedric Spicer, 24. Spicer was later arrested and charged with first degree murder. Spicer, who was wearing a mask, was arrested because the officer responding to the shooting saw him running in his direction.
The Washington Post reported that a manager said Hardin had been in a heated argument earlier while at the bar. He later left the location, and at some point the manager went outside 1920dc and observed Hardin in a verbal altercation with three men. Immediately afterwards, a gunman [believed to be Spicer] walked up to Hardin and shot him mutiple times while passerbyers looked on. The manager added that the gunman had not been 1920dc that evening.
But ABC7 reported that Hardin and Spicer had both been in 1920dc, and they had been arguing while they were there (the shooting occured with 10 or 15 mins of leaving the bar).
Whatever happened, witnesses told police that a masked man approached Hardin and shot him. According to another media outlet, another witness told police, that the masked gunman shot Hardin, and tried to shot one of the women running for safety and missed. He then returned to Hardin lying on the sidewalk and “fired multiple rounds” into his body.
Shaw neighborhood resident Alex Davidson says she was shocked when she heard about the shooting.
"I live around the corner from that 9th Street Corridor and was surprised to hear about the shooting because there generally isn't that kind of violence in the neighborhood," she said.
But long-time neighborhood resident William Curtis said, "Shooting up here ain't nothing new. They may have gone down overall, but there was once a time when this area was no place to play around in."
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