LIMA — After a fatal shooting outside Main Street Irish Pub early Saturday, the city of Lima Law Department announced at Monday’s Lima City Council meeting that paperwork will be filed Tuesday to declare the bar a public nuisance, prompting the closure of the business for at least one year.
At 1:50 a.m. Saturday, Amari Gooding, 20, was shot in the chest in the parking lot outside the bar and later died of his injuries. This incident follows a January shooting at the bar. Lima Law Director Tony Geiger said the owner of Main Street Irish Pub, Brooke Perkins, had been cooperative with law enforcement and the city, but this latest shooting prompted a response from his department.
“The owner had been in contact with the city and has been attempting to cooperate with the city and the concerns raised by the Police Department, but the situation has gotten out of hand and the owner has not been able to control it, so we felt it was necessary to take legal action,” he said.
After posting Saturday on Facebook that the bar would be closing, Perkins expressed her deepest condolences to Gooding’s family while also emphasizing that the circumstances that led to the shooting did not originate inside the bar.
“It’s important that people know that the shooting did not happen inside of the bar,” she said. “There was no commotion or fighting going on inside. It happened so fast, we did not even know anything happened outside. There was not a large group gathered outside or anything. The only way we found out something happened was after seven police cars pulled up.”
Perkins also maintained that she and her staff did everything in their power to ensure the safety of their patrons, but the persistent issue of violence in the city prompted her to make the decision to close.
“I don’t know what the future will hold, but I do know we’ll be closed for a while,” she said.
