SEATTLE — Three young people were killed and six others injured during a shootout at a hookah lounge on Rainier Avenue South early on a Sunday morning in August 2023. Seattle police recovered five guns at the scene but more than two years later, there have been no arrests.

Almost a year after that shooting, 22-year-old David Escatell was shot twice in the abdomen inside a warehouse in the Sodo neighborhood, where operators were believed to be illegally selling liquor while operating under the guise of a hookah lounge. Escatell died in the operating room at Harborview Medical Center.

Then in March, two more men — 23-year-old Ozie Whitfield and 29-year-old security guard Julius Rodriguez — were gunned down in the courtyard of the Capri Bar & Restaurant, which was also known as Capri Hookah Lounge, in Rainier Beach.

All three fatal shootings happened between 3 and 4:30 a.m., long after legally operating bars and nightclubs would have called last call and ushered patrons out the door.

The City Council this year passed a new ordinance and updated another one to help address after-hours violence, street disturbances and traffic chaos that often accompanies large gatherings of young people who want to keep partying after bars close. And while another early morning fatal shooting last week at the Evangadi Hookah Lounge in the Chinatown International District is proof yet again that a city ordinance isn't a panacea for gun violence, the laws are starting to make a difference, Deputy City Attorney Scott Lindsay said.

Problematic businesses are getting shut down and nightlife-related shootings seem to be trending downward, he noted.

“There are still homicides that occur, like with Evangadi, but the city is getting a grip on this issue and making progress,” especially in regulating “that after-hours space,” Lindsay said.

Hookah lounge closes for good

After-hours violence was the impetus for new city regulations that were passed in April, went into effect in May, and started being enforced in July after a six-week outreach effort to educate business owners about the legislation.

The City Council also updated the 16-year-old chronic nuisance property ordinance in the summer to expand the police chief’s authority to hold property and business owners accountable for the violence and street disorder associated with their premises, with nuisance activities including homicides, assaults, rapes, drug dealing and weapons violations.

That mechanism was used by Seattle police Chief Shon Barnes against the Capri, whose owner chose to shut down the business instead of taking on the lengthy and costly process of abating the nuisance activity.

Barnes used it again Thursday, declaring the Evangadi Hookah Lounge at 419 Rainier Ave. S. in Little Saigon a chronic nuisance property. Just four days earlier, a little before 8 a.m. on Dec. 1, a patron fired a gun into the business, killing 34-year-old Khalif Hussein. The shooter fled before police arrived, and no arrests have been made.

Owner Feriw Berjia, who was cited five times between July and October for violating the nightlife ordinance by continuing to operate past 2 a.m., said he hasn’t reopened since the homicide and decided to close the business for good after receiving Barnes’ letter in an email. Unlike the other hookah lounges where patrons were killed, there weren’t any allegations that Berjia was illegally selling liquor.

“I feel sorry for the person who lost his life. It should never have happened,” Berjia said Friday in a phone interview. “Losing my business, I feel sorry about it.”

To rise to the level of a chronic nuisance property, police must document at least three nuisance activities within 60 days or at least seven incidents in 12 months. The police chief then sends a demand letter, requiring a business or property to respond within seven days to discuss a course of action to address the nuisance behavior and, ultimately, enter into a corrective agreement with the city.

First added to the city code in 2009, the ordinance was updated in the summer, with the Seattle City Council adding liquor violations to the list of nuisance activities and allowing off-property incidents to be counted against a property if there is a nexus between the nuisance activity and property.

The updated legislation also increased daily penalties from the date of the chief’s declaration letter to the date the property is no longer considered a nuisance, from $500 to $750 per day. A civil penalty of $25,000 for failure to comply with the demands of the notice was also increased to $37,500 to offset the impacts of inflation since the ordinance was first adopted 16 years ago. Unpaid costs of abatement also can become a lien against a property, which the city then is entitled to collect.

The homicide at the Evangadi was the seventh incident to count against the lounge since January, according to Barnes’ letter. There was an attempted robbery and two assaults that month, a fatal overdose in May, a domestic-violence assault and a report by a possibly intoxicated employee that his ex-girlfriend had come to the lounge and smashed his TV, both in November.

Police also received a noise complaint from a woman last spring about music coming from the lounge that was so loud “it shakes her bed” and had been going on every weekend, the letter says.

An encouraging trend

Notwithstanding last week's deadly shooting, Lindsay, the deputy city attorney, said enforcement of the city’s nightlife ordinance, coupled with Barnes’ use of the chronic nuisance property ordinance, is having an effect.

Problematic businesses, including the Sodo warehouse where Escatell was shot, the Capri Hookah Lounge and Urban Hookah Lounge, also in Sodo, have permanently shut their doors.

Violent crime in the city overall is trending down this year, as it is in most places across the country, after spiking during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath. Still, this year’s data on nightlife related shootings, though a small sample size, is encouraging.

Between January and June, police responded to 32 shootings related to nightlife and 18 of them happened roughly between 2 and 8 a.m., Lindsay said. Since city inspectors began enforcement actions alongside police in July, there have been 14 nightlife-related shootings, with six of them occurring in that time frame after 2 a.m., he said.

Lindsay said lax enforcement during the pandemic and the years following it created an environment where certain nightlife operators used the guise of running a hookah lounge to evade scrutiny and sell liquor without getting a liquor license.

At last count, there were about 20 hookah lounges around the city and “most are just fine operators who shut down at 2 a.m. and are not public-safety issues,” he said. There are also fewer than 10 nightclubs in the city — including Neighbors Nightclub and Lounge on Capitol Hill and Monkey Loft in Sodo — that have liquor licenses and after-hours permission from the state Liquor and Cannabis Board to remain open after 2 a.m. after locking up liquor.

Under the nightlife ordinance, after-hours venues are also required to hire security staff, install video-surveillance cameras at all entrances, check patrons for weapons and develop and file safety plans with the city.

Berjia, the owner of Evangadi Hookah Lounge, still potentially faces $20,000 in fines for violating the nightlife ordinance after he admitted to staying open past 2 a.m. at an evidentiary hearing on Tuesday before a city hearing examiner. Back in July, the same hearing examiner confirmed the violation but waived the $1,000 fine for a first offense.

The four remaining violations now each carry a $5,000 penalty, with the hearing examiner’s written ruling still to come.

Lindsay said he spoke with Berjia, who thought that by having the $1,000 fine waived, he had been exonerated and could continue operating — which was not the case.

“He told me if he’d been made to pay that $1,000, it would have changed his calculus,” Lindsay said.

©2025 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.